


To Dust You Will Return

by longmondays



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 04:00:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2493617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longmondays/pseuds/longmondays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Iker thirty years to want something tangible. This is the bitterness of life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I blame fall and Halloween, and an increasing disregard of Things I Should Be Doing.

“You sure you don’t need any movers to help you?”

Iker repositions the cell phone supported between his ear and shoulder, cardboard box stealing the stretch of muscle in his arms. The box is large enough, heavy enough, that it requires both arms. Another four lay pressed against the windows in his car. Still, they’re not substantial enough for him to pull money out for paid workers. Especially not when he’s on leave from work. 

He reassures his brother with an exasperated grunt, quickly adding, “Yeah. Our old stuff is still here so I only brought my clothes.”

“God, Iker.” Muffled by the line, his younger brother laughs airily. “I can’t believe you’re moving back to that old place.”

Twisting his body around a corner into the living room, Iker drops the box carefully onto the wooden boards. Around expands a cloud of dust, floorboards creaking from the sudden weight. It’s the first time he’s seen their old living room since he was in his youth. Cobwebs connect the gaps of corners and the stretches of air from armrest to armrest on chairs. Where they don’t linger, there’s thick dust and a stuffy smell of old books. Iker doesn’t remain long in the dark room, its impenetrable curtains shutting out sunlight. He quickly makes the trip back to his car to start it all over with another cardboard package.

“Cleaning will take a week,” he admits mournfully, momentarily kicking himself for lacking the hindsight of calling a housecleaner.

“You’ll stay busy.”

He rolls his eyes while bumping the front door open with his shoulder. “Maybe I’ll finally find your diary when I check out your room.”

“Hey! Don’t—”

The trailing words are lost on Iker. He stumbles on a cylinder object, thrusting him forward to the ground, adjacent the collapsed box he was formerly carrying. His phone drops nearby his head thunking on the wood panels. Iker takes four seconds before he can hear the panicked calls of Unai.

“—Iker, hey, Iker! Are you okay—”

“ _Shit_ ,” he mutters. The point of his elbow hurts sharply and a dull ache centers at the side of his head, but there’s nothing that will take longer than ten minutes to fade. He reaches for the in-tact, slender block of his phone and perches it against his ear. “Sorry,” is the first thing out of his mouth, enraging an anxious Unai that he’s even apologizing, “I tripped on a—” He glances towards the open front door. “—a marker.”

“Oh my God, are you blind? Aren’t you the one supposed to be good with reflexes?” 

“What happened to you dying with worry?” Iker stares dully at the box he just brought in. It was, regardless of the methods, loaded into the house now. He waves tiredly at it and leaves again to his car. “I didn’t see it the first time I came in.”

“Put your glasses on.” His brother’s whining now. 

“Okay, okay. I’ll put them on in a second,” Iker lies. He pinches his phone again between his head and shoulder, supporting the next package. Before he walks in, he leans his hip against the car and glances out to the house in full view from the front. The white paint of the wooden panels chip away with age, needing new coats to restore the previous vibrant appeal of life the house held from his childhood. There’s two floors, not including the attic and basement, which will take Iker another week of work to repaint. The overgrown garden and vines digging into the walls will hopefully demand just a dead weekend to reprimand. 

He heads inside, making sure to kick the marker to the side, out of a direct path. 

“I have to go now,” Unai murmurs after a minute-long pause. “Iker. No more accidents? Be careful there.”

He knows his brother isn’t commenting on the fall. 

“No more accidents,” Iker promises, annunciating the syllables distinctly to strengthen his tone. Unai calms down at once at the sound of it, as do most of Iker’s acquaintances.

“Love you. Call me if anything happens. I mean it, Iker!” 

“I love you, too. Call me if you decide to interrupt the month-long process it’ll take to clean everything here.”

Amused, Unai chuckles until he hits the button to end the call. Iker stands awkwardly at the entrance of his own home when his brother’s voice no longer occupies his time. 

He begins his work.

—

Once the last few rays of sunlight disappear behind dismal clouds and the sky turns dark orange to blue, Iker ends the day by washing off dust from his hands. Streaks of dirt and dust pepper his hair and face, if not the full length of his body. He’s cleaned the cobwebs, swept up the dead insects, and dusted the furniture of the first floor. He’s loaded all silverware he’d ever need into the dishwasher to clean while he worked on the countertops and kitchenware. At one point he went to the market to bring home groceries for the rest of the week, lamenting over the dysfunctional microwave sitting uselessly in a corner. Iker also retrieved an abundant supply of light bulbs and replaced all the burnt out bulbs on the first floor, which he could surmise being over half.  

Digging water and soap underneath his nails, he recites tomorrow’s to-do list to himself within his head. He hadn’t yet cleaned out his bedroom. In truth, Iker had yet to step to his boyhood room. The family left hurriedly from the house all those years ago, never caring enough to come back to reorganize their belongings. The care never existed when the house merely caused the family overwhelming worry. 

After drying his hands, the lone tenant wanders from the kitchen up the stairs. The stairs moan with each footstep, sinking millimeters under his feet. Everything looks older, smells older, feels older than Iker could ever recall from his memories. The stairs always struck him as a boy to travel on forever, only now Iker stands at the top within ten seconds. His sigh sounds weak in the empty space. 

The hallway of the second floor must stretch just six meters and diverges into five rooms. There’s two bedrooms on either side, while the space opposite to the stairs is the boys’ bathroom. All doors are shut now, though Iker has the insides of the rooms known by heart. The second room on the right was his; his brother slept in the room across from him and next to his parents. The fourth room originally intended to be reserved for family guests, yet the guests become fewer with each year until his father used it as his office. Iker never cared for the fourth room, nor did Unai. His younger brother bothered only with Iker’s room to slip into once the moon came out and shadows danced across the walls of his own bedroom. 

Exhaust dragging his muscles down, Iker concerns himself only with opening the door to his old bedroom. He saves the other three for tomorrow once the sun returns. The silver doorknob’s cold, as is the air within the room as he steps into it. The bulb works fortunately when Iker flicks the light on, illuminating everything. There’s only a few toys strewn around; Iker had gone through a rebellious phase where he rejected his toy cars and stuffed animals to be only for infants. Unai had happily taken all of them. All that remain are a handful of action figures, a football half-deflated, and a stuffed toy in the shape of a bear sitting on top of his pillow. 

Nostalgia recalls how dismayed he’d been as a kid over forgetting to bring the bear once they’d left.

Now, Iker gingerly tosses the brown bear on top of his wardrobe and drops wholeheartedly onto the mattress. His growth spurt had been wild at the age of twelve, forcing his parents to update his twin to a full-size a few years before they had left. The gratitude he feels now melts his tired body into the bed. There’s barely enough energy retained in his limbs to kick off black boots and unhook the bothersome belt digging uncomfortably against his hip bones.

 He’s asleep within minutes. The nightmare begins, unsurprisingly.

—

_He feels the heat on his skin. Sweat drips, practically pours, from his brow onto the cotton of his shirt. His shirt’s soaked with perspiration and tears. With each quivering sob, he bites his bottom lip to hold himself together and quiet down. They can’t hear him, please no._

_The pads of his feet sting with each slap against the dirt road. He swears, he’s never run so fast in his life. His ribcage doesn’t feel strong enough to hold his fast-beating heart. He might pass out, only he can’t. They can’t see him, God forbid if they do._

_"I_ _need,” he’s spitting out whispers to himself. No one will hear him. “I need someone. Need help.”_

_When he darts around a corner, legs nearly giving out to the sharp angle, there’s excited, angry voices behind him._

_“There he is!”_

_“Don’t take your eyes off him even for a second!”_

_The tears stop falling and he runs inside the first house on his left, tall and empty and red. Red like newly spilled blood. He runs faster than he’s ever run in his goddamn life._

—

Instead of frightened, Iker wakes up disturbed and upset. He had hoped, forlorn as it now stands, the nightmares would not reoccur now that he was an adult. He knew better, he repeatedly told himself, than to allow trivial childhood fears fog his worries now that he was thirty. It’s nothing he hasn’t experienced before, even the dream of running haphazardly through a small town. He’s faced this dream many times as a boy; Unai confessed he’d share the nightmare once when they were in their early twenties.

Wiping off a string of sweat beads from the permanent crease of his brow, Iker swings his legs over the edge of his bed and stretches sore limbs. Once he notices the door angled away from the wall, despite knowing he fell asleep to it closed last night, he understands today will be another day of the same decades-old frustration. 

When Iker showers, he waits half a minute until the water switches from icy to warm. Another half minute passes until the water’s at last hot, by which Iker’s hastily twisting the knob to avoid the too-hot droplets. Dirt collects at the bottom of the drain, pulled from the grime he’d neglected to remove from his hair last night. Filth washes off his body and the pale skin no longer becomes stranger to him.

The first thing he does upon stepping out of the shower is purposely wipe the steam fogging the bathroom mirror. He rubs the entire surface of the mirror, not leaving an inch of fog remaining. Perhaps he’s turned superstitious, but he’ll be damned if he has to stare at the fogged mirror when brushing his teeth, waiting for something to appear. 

Iker resumes the work of the day downstairs, continuing to sort through the living room and kitchen. He’s slightly appalled by the outdated fashion exuding from the furniture and architecture, yet it’s tolerable. So he tells himself. 

He finds batteries in one of his cardboard boxes, slotting them into the backs of clocks and machinery alike. He throws all the curtains into the washer machine, followed by a load of towels, and finally bed sheets. 

When the towels spin within the dryer, he rests against it and collects his breath. He isn’t sure of how long he’s staying, knowing any value he gives will be shot down by his brother or colleagues. Originally, Iker planned to fully quit his day job and settle into early retirement with the savings he’s earned. Before mentioning a word of his intentions, however, there were half a dozen emails from his colleagues threatening that if he quit, they would single-handedly break his legs. Iker assumes they were joking, with evidence of spelling mistakes and awful grammar in the emails, or so he hopes. He wouldn’t trust half of them to take care of a dog. 

In the end, they settled on a paid leave of four months. Most days, Iker wakes up with no intention of returning to work and the stress accompanying it. 

At the thought, the Spaniard remembers to check his email on his phone. Since he’s failed to call an Internet provider to come out and set up his modem, he manipulates the data on his smart phone to log into his account. Immediately, the notification alarm rings six times as the emails flood in. Four of the six he recognizes as friends, one he notes as spam and trashes without opening it, and the last he doesn’t identify at all. He clicks it, curious.

_To: icasillas@live.com_

_From: kfej382947184342483247@live.com_

_Subject: (no subject)_

_Please pay attention_

_Don’t Close_

_this_

_Hello_

_Please turn Around_

_Now_

_you_

His back, stagnant like ice, gets stick with sweat immediately. The dark hairs on his arm and neck stick up and Iker’s lost the number of seconds it’s been since he’s taken a breath. This never happened before, not this, but how could it when the means were impossible as a child? Half mad with the anger that he’s, for the first time in a long time, fearful, Iker spins around quickly and determinedly. His eyes strain to take in every shadow the sun casts behind large objects. Yet everything remains the same as it was seconds before: the dryer shakes, the washer hums dull inside the house, and there’s still a pile of curtains sitting inside a woven basket he needs to hang up. 

Although his lips part, Iker knows not to speak. To speak would mean acceptance. 

When he’s on the verge of letting his guard down, a massive cloud of icy air swallows him. No inch of skin doesn’t contain goosebumps. The dryer and washer begin roaring louder and vibrate noisily against each other. Iker’s gasp is barely audible over their sounds. 

Once the increasing whirling pains his ears, he runs out of the laundry room into the vacant kitchen. The noises cease automatically and Iker can recognize how heavy he’s breathing, the goosebumps remaining on his skin. Instinct moves his hand to grip tightly the edge of a counter, staring blankly while he calms overworking lungs and a buzzing mind. He’s past the point he could try to assign rationality towards the events. 

A minute, then another. Birds chirp faintly from the outside, the sounds passing thinly from open windows and withered cracks. When he discerns the engine of a car driving down the road, Iker straightens his back and gazes towards the laundry room. All at once, the phone hastily settled in his back pocket feels dense like lead. 

He forces himself to ignore it, to ignore subsequent notification rings on his phone from when he slowly paces into the laundry room to retrieve the piled curtains. He ignores the increasing ferocity of the chimes, coming faster and faster until Iker’s last try is to power off his phone.

He hangs up the curtains and waits for the rings, nonetheless. They don’t come and he breathes. 

—

Iker gazes solemnly at the wooden cross centered at the back wall of his parents’ bedroom. It’s untouched by cobwebs, unlike the remainder of the room. He recalls the time they presented a priest to the uneven shadows and misery of their home. 

“What am I doing here?” He asks himself. He could have stayed within the familiarity his younger brother’s home, with his parents in the new house he had purchased them years ago, or simply anywhere that wasn’t in the restricting walls here. 

Nothing answers. He’s nearly disappointed. 

He doesn’t enjoy thinking of their house as  _haunted_ ; he hates the word. He screamed it once as a kid, through frustrated tears at the foot of his parents’ bed. The look his mother directed at him shook the word from his throat ever since. 

_Possessed_  is even worse.  _Cursed_  brought out his mother’s holy wrath. So he doesn’t call it anything. Iker prefers not to think of it. 

Yet it’s always been there: mysterious footsteps, repositioned belongings, nightmares, the icy cold, unfamiliar sensations. The moving shadows. There’s never been any intention of bodily harm, otherwise Iker would have never driven his car crammed full of possessions here. 

Giving a last look at the beautifully carved cross, Iker exits the room. Before the day ends, he’ll attempt his best effort at expelling cobwebs and filth from the rooms on the second floor. 

The following four hours receive no interruption. When he has to travel back and forth to the laundry room, the dryer doesn’t start beating noisily against the washer. His phone doesn’t ring. Nothing more happens, and he ends the day pleased with the work done on the second floor. The house no longer stinks of stuffiness. 

—

A week passes with the same routine. He eventually switched on his cell phone for incoming calls from his brother or parents. The dozens of emails, quickly as not to leave evidence of their presence, were deleted. They came no more.

For the moment, Iker sits within a circle of boxed-up possessions. He had unpacked his belongings and set objects from the house he didn’t desire inside of the emptied boxes. The packages bulge at the seams, where duck tape holds the cardboard together. He hesitates over his unwillingness to depart to the basement or attic to store away the items. Either alternative settles the man with wariness. 

In the end, after silent contemplating dwelling for half an hour, Iker stands and encompasses the first box within his arms. It’s a familiar feeling, given the past week. He paces to the attic ladder folded into the ceiling on the second floor; he figures if he must chose the attic or basement, he prefers going up instead of down. Shifting to support the item with his knee, he stretches for the string hanging from the ceiling and yanks it down. Immediately, the ladder spills down. Where it falls, dust follows. It’s been more than a decade since its last use; cautiously, Iker tests the lowest rung to support his weight. It holds, and he pursues up with the cardboard supported above his head. 

The heartbeat in his chest beats unmistakably louder the farther up he goes. At the top, he shoves the box to the side of the attic and pulls himself in its dusky atmosphere. Thick cracks split the walls, which he knows now he’ll have to patch before a storm comes, that allow the defiant rays of sun inside. They are weak, nevertheless, and he brings a fat candle with three wicks to boost the light the next time he carries a box. 

On the fourth trip into the attic, of the five necessary for the box count, Iker’s standing over an old nightstand, idly admiring its carpentry. A finger hovers centimeters over the unclean surface. It snatches back to his side at the defined sound of violent wind blowing. There’s no feel to it, only the ugly sound which Iker turns to stare at instantly. Nothing. And then from behind, footsteps. They sound so close to him, perhaps just a meter behind him. This time, Iker does not glimpse to the source of the noise; he’s down the ladder in seconds and running out the front door of his house.

Perspiration grows on the valley between his shoulders, dripping down his spine. Iker gapes wildly at the sun high in the sky, pleading with emptiness to spare him this frustration. He drops onto his knees and buries his face in the palms of his hands. The callouses feel rough against his face. He doesn’t care, only nudges his face deeper against his palms and produces a stuttered grunt from his chest. He aches to call Unai, yet to trouble his brother with the revelation would yield too much stress onto them both. His parents are out of the question. 

A weaker, doubtful part of Iker questions the purpose of his presence here. The louder, intransigent portion of him refuses being forced to leave a second time. He is not a scared animal; he is Iker Casillas. He will not falter from the disturbing riddles of the household. 

Slowly, he rises to his feet and wanders inside, letting the front door slam behind him. His determination wraps itself around the last cardboard box, his determination carries it up the stairs. Up to the attic, with his steady breaths and solid limbs. Perched on one of the higher rungs, Iker’s shoving the box aside and lifting a leg to tumble into the attic. Just a second before, however, he glances up to note his surroundings and where to move. 

Above him, he sees an ashen face stare impassively into his eyes. It’s undeniably male, short hair matted to one side with a dark liquid, blood he would say, if the head were not so devoid of color. It has a faint beard surrounding thinly pressed lips. Iker cannot distinguish much of a body, as it merges into the dark of the attic, candles blown out somehow. He gasps audibly, from abrupt shock and fear, and falls from the attic ladder when his body jerks back. Before he hits the paneling of the second floor, he believes to see something flicker in the thing’s eyes. 

The attic ladder folds in on itself to the ceiling, inexplicably. Iker cannot begin to care, as he wants it shut. He never wants to open it again, and he swears that he never will. Breathing heavily, his back in a seizing ache, he watches the string of the ladder sway back and forth. 

The memory of the face doesn’t recoil. When he was a child, the happenings never exhibited such distinct forms. It appeared so true and real, as if he could have touched his fingers against the dark beard and felt a pulse underneath pale skin. The air in his lungs comes and leaves so slowly, Iker struggling to process the face in the attic. 

_Was it a ghost?_  He thinks of the misplaced objects, which would require only the living to move. When he replays the footsteps, he thinks of how only flesh could make those sounds. And yet what he saw, the dead skin and lifeless eyes, they could not be warm with blood. Iker broods, and through the thoughts, he develops confusion and rage and dread. The recent sensation of determination barely keeps his mind stitched together in a false pretense of stability. 

Stability has never truly existed for him.

His sacrum throbs with dull ache from the collapse. The Spaniard’s body still lays sprawled on the ground, legs crooked and his elbows arched beneath him to provide some elevation. He doesn’t move because he’s unsure of where he’s to go. 

Iker prolongs sleeping this evening.

His bedroom has changed. The toys are gone, stored away in the attic. In their absence, a modern simplicity exists he’s always pined for. It reveals added space in the room that works to enlarge it. On his night stand, there’s a framed photograph of his family taken two years ago in Madrid. Seeing the picture calms him, thus he continuously flickers his eyes to it from where he lays in bed. 

Every faint noise jumps his vision towards the locked mahogany door. He’s restless for the two hours it takes to fall asleep. In his sleep, his muscles coil with stress. 

—

_When no one watches him disappear, he goes to the sliver of water that runs in the woods. The river’s stones are smooth and glossy, a favorite attraction to play with. Close by are mushrooms to pick, but today he placates himself only with the river._

_He spies a perfectly oval rock towards the center of the water, so he steps closer, shoes soaking, and grabs it. There’s a few others whose symmetry interests him; he collects these, too. They’re all varying shades of dark grey and feel like glass. Idly, he sucks the water out of one and begins his walk home._

_The midday heat doesn’t compare to summer’s lunchtime scorch. A muffled breeze licks his cheeks and toys with the hem of his shorts. He’s lazy with the day’s calm and takes his time walking through the knee-high fields surrounding the backs of spread-out houses._

_He’s on the verge of exiting the field when he hears them, the footsteps uncaring of concealing their sounds. In spite of the back of his neck heating up, he doesn’t turn around and pretends to ignore the company._

_"We followed you to where you go all the time, that stream.”_

_“Hey, look at us! Stupid, we’re talking to you.”_

  _He doesn’t, he shouldn’t, but his defiance earns him a strike to the head with a pebble._

_“Think you can just walk away from us?”_

_Three smooth stones clutched to his chest, he spins to face them. There’s four of the boys, eyes narrowed and haughty._

_“You see? He plays with rocks, that idiot. Probably too poor for real toys.”_

_He refuses to speak._

_“Probably too stupid! Look at his face. Is that what everyone looks like where you come from?”_

_“Hah! Is your mom as dumb and ugly as you?”_

_He doesn’t tell himself to do this, but his hand’s suddenly letting one of the rocks fly at a boy’s head. It makes a prominent noise once it collides with his forehead and the boy bursts into tears._

_“He hit him, he hit him! Now you’re going to get it, you piece of shit!”_

_Even though he throws another rock, it misses its target and the boys jerk him by his slender arms. Their harsh tugs spur protesting shouts from his mouth, but no one listens as they drag him back to the stream. His legs kick and thrash, at one point connecting with the shin of a shorter boy, fruitlessly. There’s four of them; he’s only one and an outcast. He’s nobody._

_They remind him of this when they shove his head into the stream’s water, digging his hurting face against the polished stones. They don’t care when he chokes and gasps, or when the water runs red, red red._

—

This nightmare is new. Iker’s sweating in his bed, although the room is chilled dramatically. He knows he isn’t alone. The pang in his head encourages him to demand why he’s forced to bear these dreams, yet he forces his lips together and omits any such questions. 

Within hours, Iker begins noticing the intensified events trickling down the day. In the wake of his shower, the heat fogging up the bathroom mirror, his hand raises to wipe away the steam for superstition’s sake. Before he can, letters are spelled by an invisible hand, exposing his perturbed expression between their slanted outlines. 

D O    N O T    L

Iker slams both palms against the glass, fingers crookedly reaching to erase the start of the message. No, no, no, he could not permit it to finish. Iker hurriedly covers the entire length of the mirror with his hands, dwelling too long on expunging the fog. Steadily, he leans back and pulls his arms away to see the mirror. There’s no words, no steam, and the face reflected back at him is not his. It’s longer, younger, darker. The cheeks are more angled than his own and the eyes are darker. It’s lips are thicker and curve downward. 

There’s blood in the matted brunette hair, again. 

“Shi—” He covers the mirror with his arms, eyes squeezing shut. The ardor in the reflected eyes chilled him like ice. They were, by contrast of yesterday’s torpid expression, worse. Iker couldn’t explain why such emotion would persist in the image. 

He needs to see that the mirror copies his own face. He lets a minute go by until he lowers his arms. When he sees his own severe, narrowed eyes, Iker drops his arms down to his sides. There is no one else in the mirror. Only him and his exasperation. 

The next incident occurs closer to noon, when Iker labors outside in the sun. White paint stains his forehead and cheek, left over from when he uses his arm to brush off sweat. On his belt hangs a small bucket of paint that he regularly dips his brush into. 

He’s finished the majority of the front of the house. Iker had found a metal ladder in the back that he used to reach higher areas. It may not be wholly professional, yet the job is turning out decent. As early as now, new energy flows into him from simply looking at the way the fresh paint livens everything. Admittedly, he parted with two changes of clothes already from the mess of it all.

Iker rotates the paintbrush vertically to cover the edge of a wood panel. He’s working the lower left corner now; after this, all that needs to be done with the front is add supplementary layers to thin areas in need. 

A voice from inside calls out, “Iker!” 

His ministrations stop at once, mind begging itself to recognize the voice. It’s deeper than his own and not nearly as stiff. He digs through memories, quickly, but nothing can conjure familiarity of the call. In his questioning of why there is someone in his home calling out his name, it repeats itself.

“Iker!” There’s no amend in tone or urgency in the call. Only now, Iker feels the onset of alarm and vexation. 

Setting the supplies down, Iker warily enters the house while drying hands on his dirtied blue shirt. He searches through everything on the first floor: the hallway, kitchen, living room, laundry room, and bathroom. Everything appears as it did the morning; the emptiness could not hide the owner of a voice. In the hallway, as he prepares to voyage up the stairs to check the bedrooms, the basement lock begins rattling. Of the entirety of the house, it is in the one place Iker abandoned his desire to check. The closest he had gotten to check on it was finger the small golden key hidden in one of the kitchen drawers, before setting it back down and deciding against entering the dark space. Staring at the jerking door, he muses over what he would have seen inside. 

Iker doesn't take a single step back, yet he doesn’t move closer to the basement door either. The lock twists in all directions, and the wooden door puts stress on its hinges through its quivering. Through the bottom crack of the door, it vaguely sounds like scuffling feet on the other side. 

_“Iker!”_

Different this time. Stronger, clearer, but not from the basement. Recovering from the jump of his shoulders and speeding heart rate, Iker trails his eyes up the stairs to the folded-up ladder of the attic, barely within sight. The string to pull the ladder down sways in stagnant air. 

As if competing for his attention, the basement emits primal groans. They aren’t as distinct as the calling; the moans sound farther away, likely down the unilluminated stairs he knows to be inside the basement. They’re scratchy and stifled, so suppressed and inhumane that Iker could brush it off as a distant dying animal. 

The lock never ceases in its frantic turning. 

_“Iker!”_  

“What do you want?” He challenges, shifting away from the basement door. He subsequently becomes closer to the staircase, able to witness the swinging string in better view. “It has been thirty years. What do you want?” 

His voice triggers several things all at once. Beating thumps on the basement door, the cries inside growing more shrill and less faint. His arms emerge with goosebumps, and his eyes strain from the hallway to upstairs. The sound of ferocious wind howls through the house; a glance to the window alerts him of the abrupt rainstorm and its darkening clouds, through he innerly doubts the source of the bellowing wind. 

Iker is staring directly at the attic when the ladder drops down on its own accord. He’s on the third step of the hallway staircase, prepared to encounter whatever manifests. The basement screeching becomes unbearable at this point, second to the aggressive wind blowing. Despite expectations, his stomach still rolls when he looks into the attic entrance. The face is bare and pale in front of the background of black darkness. The murkiness travels down from the attic, shading the ladder and hallway and staircase. Iker’s breaths shudder in his lungs.

Lightning strikes, the world dimming for a brief second. When everything returns, the pallid face is half a meter in front of him, apart of a larger figure comparable to his height, though elevated from stairs. Iker hisses a swear word and lurches backwards, his eyebrows furrowing above apprehensive brown eyes. 

“Sergio,” Iker’s whispering. “Sergio, please.” 


	2. Chapter 2

For a short while in his mid-twenties, Iker Casillas drained the majority of his time under the tall ceilings of district libraries. The birth of his search began with dramatized accounts of paranormal activities in novels and excerpts of incomplete interviews. The amount of supernatural information and urban legends he retained from the first month would likely worry concerned friends and family members, yet it’s not as if he felt so impassioned to explain the developing bags under his eyes at the time. 

Eventually, after trawling through weeks of ineffectual information, Iker achieved enough insight to understand the fruits of his search would bear at the start of it all. Thus during weekends squeezed between work hours, of which he kept entirely to himself, he traveled begrudgingly to his hometown to visit the town library. 

He slept in hotel rooms, always. 

Iker discovered a few old newspaper articles, never more than a few paragraphs in length. From this he gained enough to question the local police over past cases, which ended with less than trivial findings. Nevertheless, the weekends weren’t wasted away. He knew enough. 

_Sergio Ramos. Record of juvenile offenses. Found badly beaten inside an abandoned house when fifteen. Suspicion of foul play by local teenagers, but he never pressed charges. Ultimately left the town when he came of age._

There was no shock when the address of the abandoned house matched Iker’s childhood home.  

And although he never found a physical description or photograph of Sergio Ramos, Iker swears the brown eyes staring at him are his.  

“Sergio,” Iker repeats. This is the first time he directly acknowledges the unnatural presence. He doesn’t feel powerless, as he always anticipated verbal recognition would instill upon him. 

The figure, whose physical outlines blend into their surroundings, stills at the sound of Iker’s voice. The Spaniard nonetheless sidles down the stairs completely, attention unwavering. He identifies a strained look of incredulity in the other eyes, intimidating. The figure’s lips press thinly against each other. 

Iker wonders over his own stupidity and whether addressing the thing, whether mentioning its name so boldly, would list under his top regrets. All noises in the house have concluded, which leaves an eerie sensation interrupted only by the continuing thunderstorm. 

Trying again, Iker licks his lips and searches for his cracked voice. “What do you want—” 

His voice instantly triggers a crash from the basement; it sounds like something solid and tall collapsing on itself. As quickly as his pulse races, the apparition disappears by the time the crash ends. 

“Fuck,” he breathes harshly. 

He runs, his body released from the paralysis of fear, hurriedly up the stairs. Iker does not want to think about the basement, let alone check on it. Once he’s inside his bedroom, perhaps slamming the door with unnecessary force, he cradles his head in his hands and slouches over himself on his bed. He’ll go out of his fucking mind, he thinks, unless he leaves. 

Iker collects his ragged breathing. He attempts numbing himself, yet it doesn’t evaporate his urge to scream wildly or laugh without mirth. _Cursed_ becomes the only word to call it, the only word repeated in his head. The abyss of drunken bliss beckons him, yet Iker dislikes the idea of traveling back downstairs towards his liquor cabinet. It’s only his painfully aware conscious to keep him company, though it flickers like candlelight with folly.

By the irregular spasms of his right hand, Iker knows even feigning sleep will not be an alternative for the night. In spite of the somber clouds apart of the storm, half the day remains. His painting supplies still lay outside, his paint cans likely soiled from the heavy rain. 

The silence permeating the household dwells. Iker lowers the hands over his face enough to expose his eyes. He continues sitting for half an hour, both attentive to his surroundings and vacant. He contemplates methods to egress. Staying here could only spiral him into madness. 

Iker could just stand up and walk out of the front door. There would be no hesitation or looking back at lost value. It would be an ephemeral departure.

Where would he go? Subtly, his fingertips press against the skin of his face. He could not stress either homes of his immediate family with his drab presence. Coming here to begin with was to let them be, and so that he may indulge in his own loneliness. With his colleagues and friends, he would not dare staying with them longer than two evenings. Iker was, undoubtedly, uninterested in burdening others. He could not allow his fluctuating moods to inconvenience them.

He may not know where he is going, but he does know he must leave. With newfound resolution, Iker stands and yanks out a solid suitcase from underneath his bed. It’s of normal size and shape, with black leather pulled tight around a metal frame. Packing blows by quickly; he crowds only essentials within the confines, clothes folded cleanly only to a slight degree. 

It’s the fastest he’s ever packed: three minutes. Once no more can fit into the tight space, packed mostly of favored clothing, Iker buckles the lock shut and pulls it off his mattress.

The lock unhinges when he’s halfway across the bedroom, tumbling all items onto the floor in an unorganized sprawl. 

“Damn it!” 

Dropping to his knees, Iker pushes everything as a heap into his suitcase. He foregoes pretenses of orderliness, actions growing in their craze. All he wants is to leave.

Finally everything assembles, and Iker’s capable of entirely crossing the bedroom to the door. His attention doesn’t defer to the worn stuffed bear on top of the wooden wardrobe, or to an old painting he remembers hanging up when he was nine years old. Iker wants to shed his skin of everything. Returning here, he sees now, was a mistake. 

The door, despite its unlocked settings, doesn’t open. Twisting the doorknob and yanking on the wood does not yield. Iker throws his shoulder against the frame fruitlessly. Nothing budges.  

Iker shifts his eyesight throughout the room. He loudly demands, “Why can’t I leave, Sergio?” 

The apparition doesn’t return. Trying the doorknob a few tries more, Iker then drops his suitcase against the ground. Miffed, he kicks the bag towards the foot of his bed.  

His hands tug lightly at his short hair once he realizes there is a last option. The window, the damn window. He crosses to it, situated a foot from his bed, and throws open the glass panels. Raindrops hit him immediately and his navy blue curtains lift from the breeze of the wind. The Spaniard twists his body to reach for his suitcase, at which instant the window panels slam shut invisibly. He looks back outside with soaking bangs spilling water onto his forehead and stares. He can see three other houses in the distance, the fields animated from the storm, and masses of trees encircling the land. 

“I need to leave,” Iker seethes, finding himself in front of the bedroom door once more. He keeps half a meter before it and begins kicking at the end with the lock. 

“You can’t open it.”

The deep rumble of words stops him. Turning around, Iker witnesses the blurry accretion of black shadows shaped in an uneven circle. It’s against one of the corner of his rooms, emitting iciness. It’s unsettling.

Iker swallows his drying throat. “Why the hell not?”

The shape gradually spreads apart vertically, structuring more distinct outlines of a human. Iker soon recognizes Sergio’s form.

“You need to stay.” 

It takes an inaudible step in Iker’s direction, which backs the man against the door. 

“No,” he replies on a quicker beat. “Let me open the door.” Iker’s eyes narrow instinctively on the ghost, the lines on his forehead creasing. The fingers on his right hand curl inwards.  

“When you were three years old—”

He raises his voice, “Let me—”

“—You were playing in the living room, underneath the chandelier. It swung over your head, back and forth—”

—Leave!”

“—About to fall. I knocked over a glass on the counter to get your mother’s attention, so that she could come and pick you up before it fell.” 

Iker cocks his head to the right, expression dubious, and exhales seconds after Sergio stops talking. “What?" 

The ghost doesn’t respond, although it’s moved a great deal to be in front of Iker. 

Lifting his arms from his sides, incredulous, Iker presses on. “Are you suggesting that I _owe_ you the courtesy to stay? In this madness?”

Sergio’s expression lacks any conveyed emotion towards Iker’s circumspect fuss. 

“What is it that I should do? Continue on with these games?” He thrusts a hand towards Sergio’s direction. 

The absence of responses from the ghost boils his blood. Unbidden, unending, he laughs mirthlessly. This produces slanted eyebrows from Sergio, which fuels the choked sounds emitting from Iker’s throat.

“I am in Hell,” Iker decides, once he settles down. 

For the first time, Sergio smiles with closed lips. “No.”

“You have made my life a Hell. Is there a difference?” 

“You are still alive,” Sergio crisply states. Iker registers the underlying frustration in Sergio’s tone. “You have the capacity to change things.”

This, of course, Iker already knows. Staring to the space at his sides, the Spaniard contemplates in a muted pause. His silence acquiesces in Sergio’s words, though it no more explains nor excuses the past three decades.

Tired, with a sardonic edge to his voice, he says, “I have seen enough horror movies. Am I supposed to find your bones? Set you free? This is why you want me to stay, no? What is it?" 

Sergio’s shoulder jerks. Oddly enough, the ghost breathes out _yes_ as if air genuinely passes from its lungs past its lips. 

The hairs on the back of Iker’s neck bristle with dulled shock, his words having been only bitter scorn. Knowing someone’s corpse remains here lurches his stomach. Iker exhales and immediately moves to sit on his bed, not yet guiding his eyes to the ghost. His mind buzzes with unwanted confusion. The disquiet chill of the room has yet to fade away. 

“Then why have you not shown yourself before? Why are you doing this to me now?” 

A lively chuckle, one with such energy that surprises Iker, comes from the apparition. “It’s not that I wanted to wait all this time. I have tried before with your parents. They never told you. When your family left, it was clear that it didn’t work. Now that you have returned as an adult, I do not have to hide myself from you.”

The last phrase grinds Iker’s teeth together. “You spare my brother and me from that, yet let everything else happen. The nightmares!”

Sergio appears unmoved, falling back to its unnerving silence. The ghost’s outlines blur more with the room. 

Eventually, it speaks quietly. “I have to go.”  

“ _Where_? You are dead.”

Already Sergio leaves, the dreadful coldness of the room also departing. Iker gapes at the off-white paint of his bedroom, directly on the spot Sergio’s form occupied before. The friction of thoughts and emotions within his head never seem to cease, keeping him perpetually exhausted. His exasperated expression dies down to one of fixed composure, though tension remains in his muscles. 

By the time Iker stands from the awkward solidarity of his bed, the storm’s fierce rains abate by half. The diminishing grey clouds allow slivers of sunlight, nonetheless muffled by ongoing raindrops. With a disinclined glance towards his suitcase, the Spaniard dawdles on his feet. His uncertainty exposes itself when his right hand extends towards the suitcase, then drops down with a stunted grunt. He should leave, for the sake of his mind and stability. Go back to work and learn how to deal with internal conflicts. Follow his mother’s words and start a family.

He should stay, if not for his apprehensive curiosity, but for the sudden responsibility to help he’s begun to feel. The house possesses an inexplicable aura that draws in an insatiable Iker, as much as it beckons him away. 

And to help who, what—a ghost? A dead spirit? Iker’s faith mostly wavered throughout his life, never truly finding a secure foothold to latch onto. He contemplates where a spirit fits into this and where his beliefs lie. The thirty years he’s lived are testament that what’s happening could not be the blemish of an unhinged mentality. Everything happening was all real.

All the repetitive nightmares, ill feelings, unexplained sounds, and moving furniture. It was all Sergio trying to communicate with his family? Iker knows no one in his family ever underwent physical harm. For an instant, Iker feels the urge to phone his parents and admit he’s seen the face they had seen decades ago. It’s fortunately only a second until he realizes how obtuse it’d be, bringing past demons to his family. 

The more he thinks, the more small things begin to make sense. 

Iker ponders where Sergio’s likely rotten corpse could linger within the ancient household. The first place that comes to mind is the fourth, unused bedroom next to his. The bedroom his father converted to an office once guests simply broke off from visiting their uneasy home. The atmosphere of the room never once exuded comfort nor safety; going inside it often left Iker agitated. 

This agitation would now have to be blocked off for his pursuits. Would he have to remove floorboards or check in between wall space? Could it be a section directly above the room in the attic, where he first saw Sergio’s ashen face?

“I am,” Iker rubs away stiffness in his face with the base of his palm, “getting too ahead of myself.”

If he wishes to maintain the wits of his mind, Iker would need to take each day at a time. Planning too far ahead would likely overwhelm him, considering the vast ambiguity he is dealing with. He needs to develop small routines first. Sourly, he admits he also needs to set boundaries with the spirit sharing his home. 

Upon finishing his rumination, the only thing left to do is to unpack. His movements flow unevenly when opening the suitcase and reorganizing belongings in his room. The wardrobe seems less empty after the clothes are hung up or folded in drawers. Everything feels less chaotic, yet not at all fortunate. 

Although the sun burns low in the tangerine sky, dusk won’t arrive for another few hours. Nevertheless, Iker settles on a meager dinner before crawling into bed. Today would bear no nostalgia, and tomorrow could only offer answers. 

When he sleeps, restless as it is, he sleeps with no nightmares. 

—

 As bitter irony would have it, Iker could not call out to Sergio. 

“How is it after thirty years, now is when you decide to be silent?” 

He stomps down the hallway, peering inside all rooms. He stomps with too much vigor, but he has a point to convey. 

“Sergio!” 

When inside his younger brother’s room, a toy dinosaur falls off a shelf. Iker backtracks to the spot and picks up the plastic toy. It’s one of the four-legged dinosaurs with spikes on its back, though he can’t recall its name. The toy is all green and somewhat rubbery. 

“Well,” Iker stands the toy back on its shelf, adjacent three other varying dinosaurs. “Are you going to answer me? I have been calling out for twenty minutes.”

Again, the toy falls down, landing close to Iker’s foot. This time as he resets the dinosaur on its shelf, he bears a mild scowl. His eyebrows slant with thin annoyance as he guides sharp eyes around the bedroom. Beyond its sky blue walls and caramel shelves, Iker sees nothing atypical. 

“I’m not here for games.” Following an airy, impatient sigh, he perches on the edge of a twin-size mattress. “You’ve made it obvious that you’re here.” 

“Showing myself takes energy,” Sergio steps from around the bed, his form solidifying more the closer he is to Iker’s gaze. “Speaking requires even more.”

Iker doesn’t think he’ll ever be completely used to the ghost. Somewhat abashed by how taken back the jolt of his spine showed, Iker then clears his throat. He absently smooths the duvet with his fingers and ignores a gleam in Sergio’s eyes. Sergio’s dead eyes. 

Uncomfortable with the angle he’s forced to stare up to Sergio with, Iker pushes to a stand. The ghost doesn’t shift in his rooted spot, giving Iker the opportunity to view how fluctuating the apparition is. While impressively defined, Iker nonetheless could witness what lay behind Sergio’s figure; Sergio’s nominally transparent. 

Iker’s conspicuous staring attracts no piqued response from the ghost, for which he is grateful once he at last looks to Sergio’s face. Gaping at the bloodied clump of hair on his unsaturated body becomes too hard, so Iker makes sure to look only at Sergio’s eyes. 

“Do you have any clue of where your body is?”

“No.” Sergio surveys the room for a moment, sidestepping Iker to face the bedroom door. “Before you ask, I don’t remember much of how I died either.” 

_Damn_. Iker grapples for words, for anything to make the search that much easier. “Do you remember anything about this house?”

“Only what I have shown you already.” Sergio admits this nonchalantly, turning back to Iker as if the other isn’t on the verge of screaming. 

“You aren’t making this any less difficult.” Iker mimics Sergio in inspecting the bedroom, hoping for anything to trigger an idea. It feels as if he was trying to recall a forgotten word teasing the tip of his tongue. “What about a place in the house that you feel drawn to? The room next to mine, for example.”

“That room?” The ghost smiles at Iker. “While your family lived here, that is just the room I stayed in most of the time. All the others were taken.”

Lips parted, the Spaniard assesses Sergio charily. “You claimed it as yours.”

Sergio suspiciously drops all expression, which strikes Iker as chagrined. 

“Were you trying to fit in?”

“Maybe the attic—”

“You were _pretending_ , when you weren’t tormenting us.”

Sergio’s voice raises over Iker’s churlishness, warmth evaporating increasingly to yield only icy chills. “I have been dead for a long time, Iker. I never had the chance to say goodbye to my family.” 

With how Sergio’s physique quivers in its translucence, Iker imagines it being from the energy the ghost puts into speaking. It shuts Iker up. 

“There was no other way I could get your family’s attention. Be mad if you want. I had to do what I did.”

Lingering only a second later to view Iker’s bewildered stagnancy, the ghost then vanishes. 

His lungs dried out, Iker croaks out minutes later, “I’ll check the attic.” 

—

Iker cannot condone or excuse the fears from his childhood instilled on him, yet he reconsiders his current attitude. It seems most like a standstill between the living and the dead, of which Iker laments he must put behind himself lest he continue his days bickering with a spirit. 

He spends the remainder of the day burying grudges in the attic. More than once, he’s forced to sneeze in the crook of his arm after clouds of dust infest his nose. Not only was the attic dusty in certain areas, but moist in others after the storm. He had, unfortunately, neglected to patch up cracks in the walls until today while searching for bones. By day’s end, with half a dozen candles scattered in the attic, the Spaniard had turned over the entirety of the open space.

There was nothing. Iker even felt all floorboards for any unknown open slots, fruitlessly.

“Sorry,” he whispers to himself.

“You found nothing?”

Dragging his eyes to the origin of Sergio’s voice, Iker shakes his head. The ghost occupies a blurry mass of shadows. Iker doesn’t need to ask to know it’s preserving energy. 

A pause. “Iker?”

“What?” Iker brushes his palms together to shake off dirt. 

“The nightmares... I shouldn’t have shown them to you or your brother.”

He doesn’t retract his gaze from his hands. “I know.”

“Thank you for staying.”

Finally, Iker lifts his eyes to return to the black compilation. It’s shrunken, though the dread it discharges swells. He’s not surprised to realize the upright hairs on his arms and neck.

Somewhat strained, he replies, “You’re welcome, but you didn’t give me much an alternative.” 

Iker blows out a few of the candles farthest from Sergio, then walks to the ghost. He’s curious of the swirling silhouettes. 

“No one has ever listened before,” Sergio waits when Iker elevates a hand to the thick murkiness. “You’re the first.”

“How many people have you tried?”

As Iker’s hand angles towards the contour, Sergio switches topics. “You should be careful with what you do.”

Plunging his hand immediately to his side, Iker remembers his place and steps back. “You can move objects, but can you genuinely feel them?”

The shadows bubble on each other. “Not like when I was alive. Not in the way that matters.”

Nodding, he is not shocked. 

Continuing from Iker’s earlier question, Sergio answers, “There were four other people before your family that I tried communicating with.”

At once, Iker imagines four people experiencing the nightmares, the sullen atmosphere. “Poor bastards.”

They fall into silence, despite the Spaniard getting the sense Sergio borders on another confession. Iker, on the fringe of aberrant inquiries, lurches when a distant thump reverberates the household. Sergio’s shadows have expanded and contracted in the matter of seconds. 

Before the shadows completely dwindle on themselves, Sergio replies, “Tomorrow. I have to leave now.” 

By now, the abrupt disappearances were expected; they didn’t leave as much fraught as before. Iker languidly ambles to blow out all the candles and descends the attic ladder, his mind not lingering on the earlier thumping. The house resumes normal silence, imitating a pretense of peace while Iker prepares for bed.

His limbs stretch across cotton sheets after he’s cleaned himself with a shower, though maintain coiled soreness he doubts will depart anytime soon. Naturally, he broods on errors he may have taken while rummaging in the attic. The irrepressible, obsessive trait he carries demands he repeats combing through the attic again tomorrow. 

An hour of dwelling goes by that results in Iker ignoring his compulsions, and deciding to check the guest bedroom tomorrow instead. When he’s in the midst of replaying tomorrow’s to-do list internally, he slips slowly to sleep.   

—

  _In the springtime, the flowers bloom._

_Winter’s frost clings to the newborn season, evident in how the chill dries his throat, gasping as he is while rushing down gardens. Yet the rising sun warms his skin—he knows his tan will return—and it’s a pleasant feeling he’s missed. He drops to his knees at the end of a lane of plants, checking their progress and health. The green leaves appear vibrant enough, but he pours more water nearby their roots in any case._

_“Not too much water, or they’ll drown.”_

_Against the bright rays of sunlight, he squints at the elderly woman. Her salt and pepper hair frames a dimpled face. He likes to think the circle of sun behind her head mimics a halo. The pink smile on her face washes out once she observes the darkened skin surrounding his left eye. He drops his gaze to the plants and the watering can he still holds._

_She doesn’t speak, purposely, which boils his nerves. Both ashamed and prideful, he spits out, “He looks worse.”_

_The old woman sighs; not for his lie, but for his participation and endurance in the violence. She confuses him, because he personally thinks fighting back is the smart thing to do. It’s the only thing he can do._

_Gingerly, she brushes his shoulder and walks towards the back door of her home. “Come inside.”_

_“What for?” He protests, shoving the watering can against the grass. He’s prickly from her disapproval, but follows her inside nonetheless. Knowing to escape further chastising, he kicks off his rubber boots at the door._

_Idly standing in the corner of her kitchen, he glues his eyes to her moving figure. This is not the first time; he knows she’s preparing water and a wet cloth._

_Pointing to a small wooden table with a set of matching chairs, she orders him to sit. The uneven, unique woodwork of it is enough to signal it was a personal creation. The chair closest to him gives the impression of delicacy. He worries that he, out of anyone, would break it upon sitting._

_“Sit,” she commands again, inspecting his vacillating. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and obliges. Satisfied, she continues. “Your reactions will spur them on even more.”_

_“I have already tried ignoring them.”_

_She holds an icy glass to him. “They will get bored eventually. Boys always do.”_

_“No,” he mumbles._

_The woman presses the cloth against his eye, careful of its bruising. She wipes away dirt from his damaged face. “Then you need to go to the authorities—”_

_“No!” He grabs her wrist, wide eyes terrified. “Please, I have told you before, no. They can’t do anything, and it’ll only end up worse.”_

_“Oh, my love. It is already worse.”_  

—

Despite his word, Sergio does not return in the morning. Iker tries calling out his name again, but no answer responds. The dream imbued a plethora of questions he has no one to trouble with, instilling an anxiousness in him. There is, in any case, much to busy himself with. He combs the guest bedroom thoroughly, his only trouble consisting of rearranging furniture. At one instant, he stumbles across a family photo album he briefly thumbs through. The surprises end there, unfortunately, with a little less than half the day remaining. Iker kills the compulsion he knows will bother him yet again in the evening by rechecking everything in the aching room.

The second attempt reveals nothing, its discoveries just as barren as the first survey. Iker stands in the center of the room, scanning over each piece of furniture. The modest bed, the slender bookcase, and the chestnut desk, sprawling with smaller items picked up from the floor, give no answer to where Sergio’s bones could be. In all honesty, despite Sergio’s confession about the guest bedroom, Iker nonetheless believed the most promise to be within this eerie space.

Disappointed, he ventures from the dispiriting bedroom. Sergio’s absence throughout the day meant everything passed immensely quiet. Even Iker’s footsteps are hushed as he enters the bathroom. The peace is only disrupted from the squeaking of the shower faucet. Iker twists the metal to the hottest setting and closes the bathroom door, trapping the steam beginning to swirl from the pouring water. Within minutes, enough fog coats the mirror hanging above a porcelain white sink. He draws a question mark on the surface with his finger. Nothing else happens, as he hoped it would.

Again, he’s dismayed. Iker showers until the hot water beats his skin raw. 

—

The first thing Iker realizes upon waking up, hands rubbing crusts from his eyes, is that the night went dreamless. This morning repeats for a handful of other days while Iker clears out the second floor. At one instance, he stirs from sleep thinking he was back in his previous house in need to prepare for work. The days yield no results for his search, as well as no response from Sergio. Knowing Sergio will only show himself when he wants, Iker nonetheless endeavors to call out for him and provoke a response. Iker remains frustrated at his absence, antagonized by his mind’s unrelenting puddle of questions.

Eventually, the day arrives where Iker must transfer his quest to the first floor. As he steps down the staircase, he tells himself the search will be less intensive than its upstairs counterpart. Iker yawns when he sets foot into the kitchen, his eyes squeezing shut tiredly. When they open, they first focus on Sergio’s form leaning against a counter. 

“Hey, close your mouth. It’s bad manners,” Sergio titters.

Iker doesn’t stop gaping at him. 

“You fucker.” He rushes to the ghost, fully awake. “Where have you been?” 

Sergio’s outlines appear more distinct than they had a week ago. For the most part, the apparition remains primarily desaturated, though now a gleam in it mimics vibrance. 

Unbothered by Iker’s demanding aggression and obvious confusion, the ghost smirks. “Are you asking because you missed me?”

The Spaniard shakes his head incredulously. “More importantly, where did all this energy come from,” he murmurs, not intending on Sergio to pick up on his words. 

He does, regardless. “Conserving myself. My energy.” Sergio shrugs lightly and drifts his stare to the ceiling. “You have found nothing?”

“No,” Iker admits wearily. “I was hoping you would show up eventually to help me. I don’t know whether I should be checking areas less convenient. In between the walls, for example.”

“We will do those last,” Sergio admonishes. He folds his arms over his chest, though Iker wonders what good it does. 

Nodding to the rest of the space, Iker asks, “The kitchen today?”

“No.”

He balks. The kitchen was precisely the location he wished to start with first, before examining the rest of the first floor. “Excuse me?”

Sergio smiles, God be damned, at Iker’s palpable disapproval. “Today will be different.”


	3. Chapter 3

Iker treats the ghost with an austere stare. He asks, nonplussed and words hesitant, “In what way?”

“No searching today.” Sergio pauses, as if anticipating an interruption from him. When the Spaniard doesn’t, he continues. “Let’s talk.”

“Talk?”

He doesn’t understand what the two could even speak about, besides their undisguised predicament. In spite of his clear apprehension, the ghost persists after the idea, even nodding his blood-matted head. 

“A conversation,” Sergio insists. “About you.”

Iker cannot imagine a more unappealing subject. His hands feel useless and leaden at his sides as a faint sense of vulnerability prickles his spine. 

Meeting Sergio’s eyes after a shake of his head, Iker manipulates his voice flatly. “No.” 

“You have been helping me for days.” Genuinely, Sergio appears bewildered at the refusal. His hand waves idly at the kitchen cabinets and applications. “So take a break. I want to know more about the man helping me, please.”

In spite of his lips separating, Iker cannot mouth out a response. His discomfort reaches Sergio, whose eyebrows lift upon Iker’s wooden gestures. The tongue flicking out to wet his lips, the jerk of the hand, the angling of his neck to gaze at a crumb on the countertops. Iker feels the eyes on him, though they should be nonexistent, and exhales. 

“Whatever you want to know, ask.”

The apparition’s eagerness all at once floods Iker, who immediately prays he didn’t indulge in a mistake. Sergio’s honest enthusiasm burrows into the faint facial lines of his face, etched in wrinkles around his eyes and grinning mouth. It dominates Iker’s impression of him, in return leaving him startled at Sergio’s first question. 

“Why did you come back?”

He’s practiced composed expressions and calm eyes, making use of it now. Yet Sergio’s overwhelming stare makes him feel as if the ghost easily sees the transparence of his being. Iker thus tips his head down, observing cream tiles lining the kitchen floor. 

It takes little vacillation before he chooses honesty over ambiguous story telling. “The stress of my work was too high. All of my actions were second guessed, even by my employees. Normally this doesn’t bother me, but I did not have a private life to draw peace from. So I chose to find my peace by qu—” Iker corrects himself without a second thought. “By going on leave. That is why I am here.”

For whatever reason, Sergio appears unconvinced. Iker’s eyes narrow as he tells himself that there was no need of him to convince the dead being. The truth is the truth. 

“Here?” Sergio reiterates. “Of all the places you could have picked?”

“Do you want me to leave?” Iker inquires dully. 

“No, no!” Sergio steps from the counter, his movements fully synchronized as any other living human. “But there were no good memories for you here, so why this place?” On the verge of rolling his shoulders back, Sergio interrupts him to continue. “How did you know my name?”

Realizing Sergio was not shy at connecting bits of information to form a larger, and likely accurate, portrayal of the situation, Iker cuts in. “This is still the home of my childhood. You cannot take that away.” He paces towards the refrigerator. “This fact alone motivated me to explain the... occurrences of what took place here when I was a boy. I looked up information on you, which was not the easiest thing in the beginning.” 

Sergio tentatively scrutinizes Iker preparing a cup of coffee and simple breakfast. “What did you learn?”

“I learned that you got into trouble often and eventually moved away. The papers didn’t include that you moved back, however.” 

“Not many people knew. I don’t think anyone did besides the people who killed me.”

Carefully, Iker scoops ground coffee onto the coffee machine’s filter. “I thought you didn’t know how you died.”

“I don’t,” Sergio states, his pronunciation solid. 

Watching Sergio from the corners of his eyes, Iker leans against the fridge and awaits for the machine to signal its readiness. Each slow second feels like a stationary moment of dread. It amazes him the sheer volume that Sergio’s capable of transforming the atmosphere based on mood alone. “It was the boys in the nightmares, no?”

The ghost’s solemn figure dwindles minutely in its produced light. “That’s what I believe. Sometimes, when I cannot help it, these are the moments that I relive.” 

With his sight steadied on the brown liquid dropping into the coffee jug, Iker frowns unevenly. “What is it like for you? Each day?” He can vaguely see Sergio crouch down.

“Have you ever been north?”

“Only to England.”

“It’s colder than their winters. A lot colder, and empty. There’s loneliness no matter what you do or where you go, and you can never go far. Whenever I try leaving the house, I end up in another room. Everything seemed hopeless up until now.”

Iker gazes down at Sergio. “What will happen once we find your bones?”

“There can be no more bad, so it can only be good.”

The line of reason makes enough sense for Iker. The remaining minutes it takes for his coffee to brew pass along in silence, Sergio staying crouched on the floor. 

“I wish I could offer you a cup of coffee,” he lamely jokes, inciting no response from the ghost. Iker sets down a freshly poured mug on the counter and moves to Sergio. “I will do everything that I can to help. I promise that we will release you, Sergio.”

With the ghosts’ face turned down, Iker cautiously waits for him to reply. He is no good with words once they beckon emotional need, so he drifts a hand down, ready to test touching the ghost on the shoulder. Sergio’s face flicks upward, their stares jolting together, and Iker yelps. Blood drips down Sergio’s face in streams, even dribbling red circles onto the tiles that vanish seconds later. Iker hears an alarming crack in what must be his coffee mug the same second that Sergio reappears several feet away, cowered in the corner of the kitchen countertops. 

“What’s happening?!” Iker barks, darting his eyes between Sergio’s stricken posture and the sudden spillage of coffee on his counter. He throws paper towels onto the mess. “You’re bleeding!” 

Sergio’s hands instantly palm his head, though unable to retain any of the evaporating blood. “I don’t know,” he murmurs. “I was trying to remember how I died.”

“Sergio,” Iker mouths in awe. He steadily takes a few steps in Sergio’s direction. “You need to control yourself. Focus on making this stop. Think about anything else. You can do this.”

The specter merely whimpers in confusion, the rolling waves of trepidation originating from him elicitingarrant sickness in Iker. He feels that he’ll either freeze or throw up. 

He repeats, breathily, “ _Sergio_.” The air in the room seems too stagnant to breathe in. Distantly, he hears another crack in the kitchen. The world might suffocate on this unavoidable despondence. “Look at me.”

Ignoring Iker, Sergio continues murmuring muffled whines as he palms his head and face. He frantically attempts catching the wine red droplets, yet they slip easily through his transparence onto the tiles. There’s no chance for the drops to ripple as they disappear a second later.

“I can’t even feel it, I can’t feel anything,” he hisses, continuing his disregard for Iker’s alarmed state. 

With wide eyes, Iker steps himself in front of Sergio’s shrunken shoulders that burst with sporadic quivers. He’s the same man he is when he confronts his distraught workers, when he’s advising self-conscious colleagues. He so easily exudes confidence and commands attention in spite of his shaken bafflement.

But Sergio’s a ghost and he doesn’t respond to Iker trying to clutch his chin positively. Rather, as the warm fingers slip into the glassy formation of Sergio’s face, he goes rigid. The moment of contact startles them both with swapped emotions and broken pieces of condensed memories. Iker almost collapses underneath the sudden void and emptiness. The only left overs of sentiment he senses are hopelessness and apprehension. The warmth only restores once he yanks his hand away from Sergio, his brows furrowing deeply. 

Sergio’s hands are dropped to his sides, his eyes glossy but obsessive and on Iker. From seeing Iker’s inelegant stance, he demands, “What did you see?”

The Spaniard backs up and throws his weight against the counter. His whole body feels as if he pulled himself from an icy river and that it’s gained lead for veins. Breathing heavily, he shakes his head and glances down at the trembles vibrating in his fingertips. 

“I saw you,” Sergio continues.

“Sergio, _please_.” He’s exhausted and lethargic, energy drained so entirely despite the early morning. 

“I felt your emotions, too. For the first time in forever, I felt something.” The ghost chuckles humorlessly. “And it was awful, what I felt. You were in an office, overlooking letters.”

He rolls his body to face the sink, his hand reaching blindly for the distant faucet. Once he feels the cold steel, he twists it to splash water onto his face. He doesn’t even grumble to acknowledge Sergio. 

“Iker, I’m so sorry. I read the letters, I’m sorry, Iker.” 

His chest expands and he vomits into the sink. He knows Sergio’s standing next to him; he can feel it by the lack of feeling. It heaves more nausea up his throat. 

Quietly, Serigo repeats his question. “What did you see?” The blood has stopped streaming down his head.

The sink’s water can’t run over his head fast enough. The water beads drench his hair. Iker answers tersely, “I saw you die.”

He wishes to forget.

—

 He rubs his hand down the tired muscles of his face. His body sags into a leather chair as he gazes hollowly at the floorboards in his living room. Soon, he will have rip them apart. It’s there, half hidden by a coffee table, that he unwillingly viewed Sergio’s murder.

“Are you sure you want me here?”

Sergio appears hesitant once Iker jumps his eyes to the ghost idling by the living room entrance. Earlier, Iker had snapped at Sergio to leave him alone, which he immediately lamented over. Sergio only reappeared during the fifth time Iker called out for him, late in the afternoon 

Iker nods once, still languid. “You wanted to talk. That’s what you said this morning.” Before things carried away from what Iker would accept as rational. He knows not to ascribe stability to Sergio’s involvement in his life. 

Following a pause, Sergio drifts to the couch. He never sits down, by hovers near the armrest closest to Iker. “I’m not sure if continuing this morning’s schedule of events is the best thing for you right now.”

“There’s no best thing for me as long as I’m in this house,” Iker bites. “I don’t know where that even exists for me, in fact. But as long as I’m here, I’m going to handle what’s in front of me.”

He notices Sergio on the edge of a response, yet the ghost clamps his mouth shut and avoids Iker’s eyes. The eyes instead stare down on the spot of the floorboards Iker previously examined. Sergio visibly walls himself from the depth of the situation. 

“What happened in the kitchen this morning... It wasn’t the first time,” Sergio confesses. “It happened a long time ago, and it happened often. Eventually, I figured out how to make it stop, long before you were born. And it wasn’t just the bleeding.”

Iker can’t imagine anything beyond the terror of Sergio’s head pouring blood over his eyes. “How did you make it stop?”

“I stopped thinking about everything. I tried forgetting everything about how I died, until everything was a standstill. All the days blended into one, to the point I don’t know how long it’s been when I’m by myself.”

Iker calmly observes every subconscious gesture and expression Sergio presents. As much as he tries detaching himself, he cannot evade the empathy produced by Sergio’s words. Uncomfortable by the disquiet, he glances away from Sergio. 

“I tried remembering how I died and it opened that gate. But by seeing the blood, I was almost hopeful.” Sergio shakes his head. “I wanted to feel something, even if it was the pain from the wound. I wanted it so badly, Iker.”

Letting the admission sink in, Iker slowly fumbles through words in his mind. He finds nothing appropriate to respond to Sergio with, and nothing to stir the roll of his tongue. The only hope Sergio has, he sees, is to pass on. 

“I am happy you’re here and that I finally have someone to talk to. I don’t have to feel alone anymore.”

There’s a peculiar unease in the way Sergio says this. It causes Iker to shift restlessly in his chair while he searches again for words. It’s not unlike the weighing of shoulders, though he wouldn’t settle on that as the only description. Perhaps it’s the blur between life and death, or simply the way Sergio sharpens his eyes and admits so nakedly his thoughts. 

Eventually, Iker withdraws from himself and curves his lips up. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes, but today has not been kind to his wits. 

“Is there anything else you need to share?” He calmly asks.  

Sergio doesn’t delay. “No.” 

“Well, then let’s start with your childhood.”

—

By midnight, Iker has learned plenty about the ghost dwelling inside of his house. The most prominent fact, of which he learned everything else, is that Sergio enjoys speaking. 

Sergio enjoys speaking a lot.

Which explains the heavy eyelids and politely stifled yawns from Iker. He rolls the joints in his wrist while listening to Sergio present an old memory from his teenage years. None of the memories mirror the gravity of the nightmares Iker once endured. 

“She wasn’t happy, Ms. Eva. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so mad.”

“You destroyed an entire row of plants in her garden by playing football,” Iker chides, though content to finally know the name of the woman from Sergio’s dreams.

“Of course, but she was _livid_. She made me replant every single one!”

Stretching out his legs, Iker rolls his eyes lightly. “I would have kicked your ass.”

“Sure.” Sergio pauses and looks around the room, a playful gleam returned to him. “She almost did.”

Iker doesn’t press beyond Sergio’s teenage years, unsure whether Sergio lived well into his twenties. Cradling a glass of red wine, he pursues another boyhood story. “Did you ever have your first kiss?”

The glare Sergio directs at him answers enough. “I didn’t die in my diapers.”

For the first time in the day, Iker laughs at the offended look Sergio bears. “At what age?”

“I was thirteen. How old were you?”

The Spaniard thinks back, remembering brunette curls and chapped lips. His first kiss was awkward and his hands couldn’t stop sweating. Somehow, it was perfect at the time. “Sixteen. Was she pretty?”

Sergio doesn’t answer at once, wandering around the living room in a desultory fashion. “No.” 

“Yo—”

“But that’s because she was a boy.”

It takes all of Iker’s nerve to not jerk his limbs awkwardly, repressing the urge to straighten his back within his chair. Sergio shyly doesn’t meet his stare, instead fixating on an unimportant decorative piece in the room. 

He ponders whether he’s jumping to conclusions. Slowly, Iker inquires. “Are you gay?”

Sergio looks to him, unforgiving. “I am. Are you—”

“I’m not upset,” Iker quickly interrupts. “I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

It’s not a reassurance that instantly composes Sergio, yet the ghost steadily revokes the indignant slant of his brows. He leisurely walks towards Iker and sinks down onto the couch, though parts of his legs pass into the red fabric. 

Hoping to ease Sergio, Iker chooses a different topic. “Should we search the living room tomorrow?”

“I don’t want to.” 

“I don’t know why you’re being stubborn,” Iker sighs. “This is the only good thing for you.” 

The outlines of the ghost become less clear. “I know that more than anyone. I just want to preserve the last human contact I’ll ever have.” He stares up at the ceiling, where the chandelier hangs. “I want to have one last conversation, but not now.”

Recognizing the strained words, Iker acquiesces for the day. There’s no stifling of the upcoming yawn, of which Sergio grins at. They bask in sedated silence, Iker nearly nodding off.

“Tomorrow, we should actually talk about you.”

Iker finishes the last of the dark red liquid in his glass and yawns yet again. “There is nothing exciting to share. I’m a very simple man.”

“You can’t really expect me to believe that,” Sergio murmurs while rolling his eyes. 

“You don’t need to.” Iker stands and heads towards the kitchen to clean the last of the dishes. “Just don’t expect much.”

After setting his cleaned dishes up to dry, Iker then stores left overs of chicken and vegetables inside the near-barren fridge. Soon, he’ll need to pick up more groceries from the farmer’s market. He pauses by the laundry room to pick up finished loads before retreating up the stairs. Sergio already forms anew at the top of the flight; his outlines blur completely into the air.

“You’re fading,” Iker notices once reaching him. 

Sergio, unconcerned, nods and glimpses at the translucence of his arm. “I didn’t expect to use as much energy as I did today.”

Iker recalls the days of Sergio’s absence, questions whether he’ll be experiencing them again shortly. He stalks around Sergio to the bathroom, though lingers at the doorway with a gentle hand grasping the doorknob.

“Bathroom is off-limits when I’m using it,” he mumbles. “Good night, Sergio.”

The ghost only laughs in response and disappears without another word.

—

_He wants to scream past the thick blood dressing his lips. It’s a struggle to breathe with the broken curve in his nose, so he gasps and gags with his mouth. The two men misinterpret his staggering breaths for weakness and don’t expect the punch he lands on the one closest to his right. Someone at once digs their nails into his upper arm, but he laughs and twists around quickly to jam his elbow against the man’s temple._

_He’s grown up cockier and stronger. He’s learned how to defend himself._

_“I’m outnumbered and it’s still an uneven fight,” he wheezes, imperious, past the pain electrifying his left leg. “You’re only boys who haven’t grown up, not men.”_

_He never learned how to bite his tongue, but he doesn’t care for it when he’s thrown back. The body on top of him, with its knees digging sorely into his stomach, matches in number each of his haughty words for a punch._

_There’s not an inch of his body that doesn’t ache. He smiles red, “Fuck your mother.”_

_The man’s face twists into an ugly grimace. He watches the closed fist hover over his face, preparing for a powerful strike._

_“Enough.”_

_A third man calls off the hit, dwelling in the shadows of the hallway. His leather shoes tap on the floorboards as he walks deeper into the living room, face exposed as livid and vexed._

_“Son of a bitch,” the freckled man hisses. “I saw what you did.”_

_His stomach drops with hysteria. He hasn’t lived long enough to be content with the idea of dying, so he dislodges the unsuspecting figure on top of him. He’s still fast enough to escape grabbing fingers at his ankles. The teeth in his mouth throb in response to a clenched jaw._

_“Yeah?” He glowers at the freckled one. The two other men encircle him threateningly, though don’t proceed to seize his swaying form._

_The third man drags out a single floorboard in his hands. He recognizes it from the basement; a few loose nails jut out from both ends of it. It’ll hurt, he knows. It’ll hurt like fucking hell. Not a second after the man cocks his head, he finally feels himself captured by the remaining two men. One breathes sourly onto his neck._

_He stomps on this man’s foot, but the jerk of the man’s pain propels him forward. To the one with freckles, whose white teeth gleam in spite of the utter darkness in the abandoned house and lifts the wooden board like it has no weight._

_As it slices the air, he thinks aggrievedly over the injustice of his life. He’s a son of a bitch, a poor bastard with no last words as the wood crashes into his skull with embedded nails. He’ll never resent or love again, never even feel his body drop to the ground and spill blood like wine. It’s only the abyss for him._

—

Iker’s morning ends with his head in the toilet. He spits out viscous saliva into the basin and gathers labored breaths. Each moment he thinks himself well enough to stand, the nausea tears his uncooperative stomach. There can’t be a drop more of liquid held inside of his body with all the purging he’s endured. Sergio deferentially withholds any inquiries of his well-being, though Iker earlier felt his presence near the closed door for a five-minute stretch. 

He tries forgetting the nightmare to quell his sickness. Nevertheless, the hurt inconveniences his mind and his nostrils fill up with the reek of invisible blood. The experience was already appallingly tangible during yesterday’s encounter, yet to remember it again in his dreams only repeated the exposure with acute awareness.  

In time, Iker manages to pull himself up from the bathroom floor and flush the toilet. His stomach still billows by the time he cleanses his face and teeth, but with less vigor. As he twists the faucet shut, he can again sense the ghost outside the door. 

“Iker?” Sergio questions, breaking his silence. 

Iker buries his wet face into a cotton washcloth. “Mpf,” he grumbles. 

“Are you okay?” Realizing the redundancy in his inquiry, Sergio corrects himself. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” the Spaniard lies. He feels unprepared to face Sergio, thus he crouches down in the bathroom and rests his head gingerly on his knees. He had waken up in the morning, sweaty and in the dark, overwhelmed with uncertainty that he couldn’t completely help the spirit. While he knows the insecurity to be as a result from the emotional stirring of his nightmare, Iker nonetheless broods and obsesses. 

“You’re lying,” the ghost complains. “Is it the same reason as yesterday?”

Iker ignores the question, practically balling himself between the wall and floor. When he notices black swirls curiously peeking underneath the crack of the bathroom door, he bounds outside the bathroom. He all but brushes with Sergio’s amassing shadows on his way to the bedroom, but they both seize apart from each other in the appropriate second. Iker whispers a curse and buries his wallet, phone, and keys into his pockets. 

“You’re leaving?”

“I need to buy groceries.” Another lie, one that prickles his gut as he leaves the house. 

He leaves it with an eerie silence, shuddering when he locks the door. Yet driving down the dirt road into town feels relieving, so wholly freeing. 

The alleviation only lasts half an hour. 

Iker dawdles inside his car, parked in the hushed corner of an otherwise engaged parking lot. He stares at his lap, feeling the clutch of guilt at his conscience. The voiced promises he’s made to the ghost, he can’t forget them. They peck at his reservations while he simultaneously feels diffident about his own abilities. 

What if he fails? What if the bones cannot be found? What if they have been hidden elsewhere or deteriorated? Iker mourns upon thinking of how long Sergio has been trapped within the house, and how much longer he could be confined between the walls. 

There are no remaining options; Iker has to do this, no matter the methods. 

He wavers over buts and hows. 

Iker smoothly retrieves his cell phone from his back pocket and dials a number. Holding it to his ear, he listens to three rings until a voice answers the call.

“Hello?”

“Cesc,” Iker greets. He barely gets out another word before he hears Cesc spill over fast words.

“Iker! Are you all right? You never call anymore. How are things doing? Are you planning on coming back soon?”

He interrupts the other before he runs out of breath. “Everything is fine, don’t worry. How have you been?”

By the way Cesc hesitates a reply, he knows the man is mulling over Iker overlooking the question on returning. Cesc sighs, “Really busy, but great. Everyone here misses you. Is there anything you need?”

“I need...” Iker glances at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He looks as shitty as he feels. “Advice.”

“Advice,” Cesc slowly repeats, undoubtedly curious. “What on?”

“There is someone I met who I am trying to help—"

“Oh, God.”

“—and I don’t know if I can.”

“You already promised them, didn’t you? Iker, you always do this. You try to take on everything and then worry yourself to death on the details.”

“Cesc.” Iker rubs the bridge of his nose, eyes fluttering shut. “They don’t have anyone else to help them. That’s why I’m concerned.”

Cesc’s voice comes out soft on the line. “You put all the responsibility on yourself.”

“Yes.”

“So what’s stopping you from helping them besides yourself?"

“I feel guilty already! What if I screw this up? There’s no one else for him. I can’t disappoint him on this.”

“Okay, Iker. You already know that by calling me and walling yourself up, that you already are failing him. If you’re going to help someone, then just do it. We both know that you’re extremely perceptive and that you’ll find a way. It’s why you’re our leader!” Cesc whines briefly about returning already, to which Iker groans and scrunches his forehead. “Anyway, whenever we had trouble and went to you for help, you’ve always been able to give it. This isn’t the moment you’re suddenly going to be bad at helping people. Just _do it_.”

“But I—”

“No! Stop it, Iker. If you’re worrying this hard over it that you have to call me, then you already have the determination and will that you need. You just need to stop with the cold feet and insecurity, and do it already. And if you fail the first time, keep trying. That’s what you always told me.”

“Look at what an ass it made you,” Iker mumbles. 

“Shut up. But maybe focus more on yourself after this. I thought this whole break was for you to sort yourself out.”

Iker wants to laugh at all the good that’s done. “I’m trying.”

“You better be!”

“Send everyone my regards,” he reminds. “I’ll call again soon.”

“Bye, Iker. We all love you.” 

“Until next time.” Iker hangs up. 

Although the tension built in his shoulders releases a fraction, nerves continue fraying Iker. He fully acknowledges the truth in everything Cesc had told him. Feeling it, on the other hand, came difficult. 

He continues dwelling into the day, until the sun dips into the horizon. Unable to come to terms with himself, Iker checks into a small hotel for the evening. Sergio must already be upset with him for leaving earlier; extending his absence for a day cannot be all that bad. It’s not a gesture Sergio hasn’t already performed. 

The entirety of the night, he ponders over Sergio’s existence. He wonders where the ghost disappears toin the minutes and days he’s not with Iker, and what it must feel like. If the racking sensation of the numbing cold from touching Sergio is anything like it, he pities him deeply. How could this fate await an innocent man murdered so grotesquely? There can be no justice but desperate relief for the tormenting’s end. 

In his bed, Iker tangles himself in the sheets for all his tossing and turning. His legs ache entirely. The hotel room, albeit chilly, compares nothing to the frost of his home. While unwelcoming for much of his life, its now slowly grown on him. Not to his liking, but something tolerable. Something to be expected.

Sometime in the early morning when the sky is still dark, he arises from a blurry drowsiness to increase the heat of the room. He sets the temperature beyond warm, if only because it’s a luxury unavailable in his home. Within minutes, the heat swells the room. Iker twists out of his shirt and crawls onto the mattress again, ignoring the too heavy duvet. 

He sleeps a few more hours, until his biological clock nags him awake. The Spaniard doesn’t remember the last time he’s been capable of sleeping in. His clothes from yesterday are the only thing he brought with him, now wrinkled and smelling of a day’s wear. Even following a shower, he appears disorganized and worn. 

In spite of his disorderly image, the night’s sleep did well to ease his uncertainty. For the most part, he has absolved his preoccupations with a will to not give up. He will, no matter what occurs back in that somber home of his, discover how to free Sergio from imprisonment. 

Iker checks out in the hotel’s barren lobby, then purposely walks to his car. He doesn’t clutch the steering wheel as strained as he did the day before. As a last note recollection, he stops briefly at the market to purchase routine groceries—as he originally told the ghost he would be doing. Afterwards, in the time it takes to drive out of the town to his house, he designs an abbreviated plan for the remainder of the week. Regardless of Sergio’s decision to not yet deal with his bones, Iker nonetheless hopes to at least locate where the remains could be. If only to reintroduce a sliver of certainty to attach his doubts onto.

For all his day of thinking, he could not prepare for the lurch in his stomach upon arriving home. He hesitates in his car, momentarily too stunned to shut off the engine.

“Breathe, Casillas,” he whispers under his breath. 

After a minute of frozen silence, he forces himself out of his lingering to walk into the house. By the stiff atmosphere, he feels like an intruder in his own home.

“Hello?” he asks, carrying a paper bag into the kitchen with one arm. 

Iker stores away the groceries quietly, awaiting a response that doesn’t yet come. Between opening and closing drawers and the fridge, he regularly gazes around the kitchen in anticipation of Sergio. While he folds the paper bag into a small square and saves it inside his pantry, he senses the off-putting tenor always emanating from the specter. The chill stops his movement, neck craning to observe the pantry fully. He dallies for Sergio to answer, to show himself. 

Sergio doesn’t, in spite of Iker’s stronger recognition of the ghost’s proximity. But he sees nothing, only air, and waits longer.

“Sergio?” The thin, small hairs on his arms and neck stick up in the iciness. He sighs and tries again, gauging the nature of Sergio’s blind eye. “I’m sorry.”

“All night, I kept thinking that you weren’t coming back.”

Iker watches as Sergio develops to his right, faint lines growing more distinct and vaguely saturated. The facial expression is carefully concealed, akin to how he first saw Sergio’s face in the attic.

“I gave you my word,” he assures. “I would never abandon you now.”

The note in Sergio’s voice seems to hold all the insecurity he felt last night. “No matter what happens?”

“No matter what happens.” He shakes his head and admonishes, “You need to trust me completely, Sergio.”

His words fuel a conviction in Sergio. “But you still left without warning me. Where did you go? It was like you’d given up.”

God, he wishes that their conversation doesn’t end with a migraine. “I needed to leave.” Iker tries flatly explaining, “The house was becoming too much. I only need a little bit of time to myself away from it."

Sergio’s sharp eyes reminds Iker of how cramp the pantry feels with both of them inside of it. He shifts on his feet, Sergio pointedly observing his discomfort. 

“I can only imagine how freeing it must be to be able to break away from this house,” Sergio reproves with a frown. 

Iker feels like a dumbass. Lips parted, though unsure of what he could possibly say, he gapes at Sergio. The ghost stares back, inviting Iker to reproach. 

“I’m sorry,” Iker repeats. “But I did this for you.”

“I only ask that you warn me next time,” Sergio implores. “It was because you saw my death, no?”

“Yes,” he concedes, not at once. “It shook my resolution. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to help you fully.” Iker gazes at Sergio wholly, opening himself. “It was fucking terrible, thinking that I could do nothing but fail you.”

Sergio groans over his honesty. “How is it that I meet you now in death, and not in life?”

Iker gives a thin-lipped smile. “What?”

“No one,” the words reveal more of the hurt in Sergio’s face, “has shown me more kindness in my entire life than you have in a few weeks.”

He struggles with his smile, remembering his nightmares of Sergio’s face being shoved into the rocks of riverbanks. When he thinks of Sergio’s past, he can’t see past the blood. 

Exhaling, he then asks, “How old were you?”

“I was twenty-six when I died.”

“Christ.” No, no, no. “Fuck.” Iker brings his palm up to his mouth, eyes narrowed. “Fuck.”

“Are you okay?” Sergio frowns, his vibrance shimmering dimly.

“You were twenty-six!” Iker cries out. “You were—”

“Young. Yeah, Iker. I know. Can you calm down?”

Iker gawks, unabashed by the widening whites of his eyes. 

“Can you calm down _please_?”

Brazenly, the Spaniard whirls out of the pantry. Belatedly, he realizes he’s still carrying the folded-up brown paper bag. He snarls lightly while thrusting it into a random drawer. 

Faintly, he hears Sergio mumble, “Oh my god, how is he the angry one now?”

At the sound of the ghost, Iker slams his hands down on the countertops in his kitchen. His shoulders arch over and he fights a dozen concurrent emotions. He feels rage for the injustice of a life not even his own. 

“Are they still alive?” Iker seethes, seeing that Sergio has returned to his side, though with a kept distance.

Something flashes in Sergio’s eyes and Iker hazily wonders if he’s crossed another line. The ghost furrows his brows and delicately speaks. “Who are you talking about?”

“You know who I’m talking about! The three men who killed you.” 

Sergio snaps at him, “How am I to know? I have been here ever since they did. Why are you asking?”

Already, the Spaniard stomps out of the kitchen; his feet may as well be on fire. His hand thrusts into his pocket to feel the jagged edge of his keys, on the verge of again fleeing the house. Sergio’s immediately one step behind him, urgent and consternated and ignorant towards the muffled shattering of glass from upstairs.

“Iker, what are you thinking?! Where are you going?”

Fuck, he grits his teeth and hangs his head, blindly extending his hand to the doorknob. “I need to find out.”

“And do _what_?” Abandoning his composure, Sergio pleads, “You said you wouldn’t leave. You only just came back.” 

Iker pulls his hand back and slowly spins to face Sergio. The ghost’s lips purse in a frown, his fists clutching open air at his sides. Iker blows out air and runs stiff fingers into his hair. 

“Sergio,” Iker starts. Once Sergio’s eyes harden at once, he relents and holds his hands up, dropping his car keys onto the floor. “All right. I’m staying.”

Distracted by his fury, he doesn’t make out Sergio’s sweetened neediness. He follows Sergio into the living room, footsteps making as much sound as a ghost. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Each time Iker collapses onto his living room’s leather armchair, Sergio always perched dutifully nearby, he loses all track of time. He originally wanders to the space on bright mornings with remnants of coffee beans staining his breath, wholly intending to pressure the wooden floorboards apart in search of Sergio’s bones. And for all his coffee-fueled determination, the ghost springs himself upon the Spaniard and forces another winsome distraction before either of them can blink. They whisper promises of ‘later’ and ‘not yet’ to each other before Sergio pries about Iker’s personal life and Iker sensitively inquires about Sergio’s ghostliness. They’ve both learned to evade prickly topics with each other, given Sergio’s unbalanced strength of memories to overwhelm them both, and Iker’s newfound overprotectiveness that regularly bequeaths them irate. 

Iker’s attention to every gesture the ghost conducts becomes worryingly consuming when one evening he laments over his inability to brush shoulders with Sergio, or to even clasp the other on his back. The distress evident in his wrinkled eyebrows easily alerts Sergio, who later questions him insistently. Iker stupidly replies that he has no idea what Sergio means, and then indulges in another reluctant memory of his twenty-odd year old life for Sergio to learn. He soaks it up and Iker tries hiding his obvious staring at Sergio’s quirked simper. 

One evening, directly following Iker’s recollection of juvenile hazing during university, Sergio remarks, “I wonder if we would have been friends, had we lived at the same time.”

Glancing up from his smart phone, having been checking his emails, Iker wishes to scream _don’t even doubt it_. “I would never had let anything bad happen to you.”

They then bask in an unnerving silence, Iker particularly brewing in his vexation for the three murderers. He has yet to discover their fates, mindful of Sergio’s attitude towards the Spaniard leaving the house to do so.

Half a week later, the morning alive with chirping crickets and dew, Iker arises from his bed and roams down the stairs before Sergio stirs with the soaring sun. He crouches on the ground and fingers the cracks between floorboards, running through the process of dismantling the beams. He doesn’t know how to continue without completely damaging his home.

He rasps knuckles onto the floor, barely an echo returning. From behind him, he hears, “What if I’m not there?”

Iker nearly jolts out of his skin. He cranes his neck around and glimpses at Sergio loitering at the living room entrance. 

“Good morning,” Iker greets. He shakes his head and drops both palms onto the wood. “This is where it happened.”

“How would they have moved my body underneath the floor, of all places?”

Iker pushes himself onto his feet. “I still need to check it, Sergio.”

“You’re not thinking,” Sergio exclaims, head shaking. “Are you going to bring a sledgehammer to these boards and tear the house down?”

“If that’s what it takes, then yes.” Not fully fathoming the trail of Sergio’s interjection, Iker crosses his arms over his chest. “I will do anything.”

The ghost reiterates, “They would not have hidden me there.”

“It’s as if you do not want peace,” Iker hotly presses. 

“ _What_?”

“All I ask for,” Iker entreats, words quick and strong to overcome Sergio’s glare, “is to find your bones sooner and not later. What we will do with them and when we will is up to you. It won’t mean you’ll have to... leave immediately after.” His arms stretch from his sides, beckoning the ghost to understand. “I just want to know where your remains are, please.”

Sergio’s eyes have yet to dissipate from their glare. 

Sighing, the Spaniard steps towards Sergio. “If you still wish to wait, I’ll respect your wishes and stop looking.”

“This was bound to happen,” the ghost professes eventually, words lifting Iker’s chin. “I know it’s been troubling you ever since your nightmare. Continue searching, I suppose.”

“You’re sure?” Iker calmly checks. 

“Yes, but...” The ghost turns around the corner, disappearing to the hallway. “I’ll be waiting elsewhere.”

Mute, Iker hesitates at Sergio’s departure, though his tension decreases after the other’s assent. He glances back onto the spot on the floorboards, immediately wondering the location of his father’s old toolbox. There should be enough equipment to in the household for him to figure out how to properly unfasten the old panels. 

In between uncovering his father’s toolbox and detaching the boards, he prepares coffee. There’s no tinge of drowsiness to his limbs, but that doesn’t cease the want of alertness caffeine induces. He’s not hungry, either; if anything, his body feels on the verge of bursting. There’s too many ramifications to confront in the day’s events. 

Half a cup later, Iker eventually accomplishes a solid routine of loosening the boards from the ground. He’s moved the coffee table and couches back against the wall to give him space to set down the wooden beams. There’s two removed so far, supplying enough of a hole for him to dip his head into, a flashlight illuminating the darkness. The depth of the gap doesn’t extend dramatically far down.

Beyond the shadows and dust-encrusted cobwebs, there’s only a few distant pipes running underneath the floor. Iker cannot make out any unnatural mounds or fragmented pieces of a human long dead. His eyes strain in the darkness, checking the space repeatedly. 

“No,” he grinds out, heart dropping in his chest. 

Immediately, the man sits back onto his knees and works at lifting up a third panel, eager to see more. He pushes it briskly to the side and slopes his gaze back underneath the floor with all his conviction. No matter where he points the flashlight, Iker cannot spot anything remarkable in the dust. 

Of course, frustration can only be a familiar companion. Eyes sharply narrowed, he barks, “Fuck!” 

Iker shoves the nearest wooden board out of burning dissatisfaction. His fire wants to tear apart the remainder of the house, to release his frustration and find Sergio’s bones so that at least there may be one silver lining he can yield to. He wants to end the disappointment and regain clarity. 

But all he does, with his twisting stomach and mildly concealed scowl, is set the boards back into place. He grips the wood too firmly only to let it go so fast, lining it again with his flooring. At the prick of a splinter, he lightly hisses between his teeth and yanks the chip out.

Another dead end room. They were running out of options.

Iker stores the furniture again to its original setting with hazy movements, if only so he doesn’t have to return later. Standing in the middle of the hallway, toolbox handle within his fingers, he honestly doesn’t know what to do next. 

Once he trudges to the kitchen, he remembers his unfinished coffee cup left in the living room. He makes a new cup after setting the tools down. 

“This doesn’t leave many other rooms left,” he tells himself, hoping to feel relief in the fact that he was nonetheless closer to Sergio’s bones. It works to a shade. 

Iker roams his stare across the many cabinets and drawers in the room. From cleaning out the first week he’d return to the house, he knows there’s nothing to be found within them. Underneath the last level of cabinets, however, could prove valuable in probing. As Iker dips his gaze further down to the square tiles, his stomach abruptly plunges. 

“God. This can’t be it.” Iker wets his lips anxiously, shifting around while examining all the tiles within the kitchen. 

He thinks of beneath the kitchen tiles, squares cemented firmly into place... Reinstalled during his childhood, after his parents dismayed over the damaged condition of their prior kitchen floor. 

“Be reasonable, Iker.” Sergio snaps him from his thoughts, presumably done with hiding and drifting deeper into the kitchen. “This would have been too elaborate for them. Trust me on this.”

In spite of wincing, Iker shakes his head. “Just in case, I still need—”

“To check, yeah. Leave it for last, at least.” When Iker stubbornly doesn’t relent, Sergio adds on, “We can look at the laundry room instead. Come on.”

The ghost certainly doesn’t beckon an argument, intending for his word to be final. Yet Iker’s feet root into spot over the tiles and weigh him down. Sergio notably mutters to himself, to which Iker willfully frowns at.

“Can you hear me?” Sergio prods, stepping forthrightly into the Spaniard’s space. “Or am I talking to the dead?” 

Immediately, Iker chastises him. “ _Sergio_.”

The ghost lightly smiles. “Not big with irony?” 

“I have had enough irony to deal with in the living room,” Iker sighs, pacing around the ghost to amble towards the laundry room. From the corners of his eyes, he sees the crestfallen sink in Sergio’s shoulders. 

“It’s a big house,” Sergio reminds the two of them after a pause. 

“It is. It is only a matter of time now.” 

From entering the small laundry room, Iker doubts the potential of surveying it. The floors are also tile and besides the washer and dryer, all that’s to be offered are three shelves nailed to the wall. Besides him, he knows Sergio quickly thinks the same. 

“I need to go find the men,” Iker announces once they’ve stood in a minute-long silence. “If by some chance they’re alive, I can make them tell me—”

“It’s not happening,” Sergio interrupts with a growl. “You’re not seeking out _murderers_ , Iker.”

Facing the ghost wholly, Iker then raises an eyebrow. The corner of his lip pulls down. “As it stands, they’re the only people who know where your body is. This will save us time and the possibility of me bringing a bulldozer or burning everything to ashes.”  

Unimpressed by Iker’s dramatics and still unconvinced, Sergio grimaces. “You just still want to see if they’re alive.”

“I do want to learn that,” he admits. “But everything else I have said is still true.”

“What would you do? If you even mention my name to them, they might try to hurt you. If you’re lucky, they’ll just ignore you.”

Iker’s head shakes. “By now, they’re old men. No one is going to hurt me. And if they don’t comply, I’ll threaten—”

“ _No_.”

“No?”

“Are you out of your mind?” Sergio cries out, his voice powerful from within the cramped laundry room. The energy he suddenly possesses proves his figure more distinct. “These men, they’re dangerous, Iker. It does not matter their age. If you threaten them, they will hurt you for sure. That is how they are, it’s how they’ve always been.”

“Sergio...” Iker reaches out, instinctively, to calmly grasp Sergio’s upper arm. The ghost yanks himself back before they can touch. 

“You’re not listening. They’ve already tried hurting someone I care about before. Why should I give them the opportunity to do it again?”

“I can at least see if they are alive!” 

Dropping his glower, the ghost opts for a frown that slices at Iker’s conscience. There is no doubt to his concern. “I don’t want you to do this.”

“Wanting and needing unfortunately are not always the same,” Iker lightly counters. Sergio’s eyes are large with distrustful fear. “I promise not to confront them. I’ll just check for now.”

Sergio completely takes in Iker’s honest stance. “Not a word, Casillas.”

Staring at the cloudy formation that constructs Sergio’s form, Iker agrees with a nod. He then tilts his head towards the entrance of the room, signaling for Sergio to step out with Iker behind him. He’s wary of disturbing the ghost even more, so he focuses on silently preparing a simple breakfast that he knows his stomach will reject. 

Even while he toasts bread and spoons marmalade onto the piece, the ghost still hasn’t left. Sergio stands on the other side of the kitchen island, hushed and observing Iker as he sets a glass of orange juice next to his coffee. It’s certainly not the first time the ghost has done this, curious of the most basic chores in Iker’s life. Every now and then, during quieter moments of the days, he slips into whichever room Iker occupies and simply watches. Iker doesn’t mind it, though he feels dampened embarrassment when marmalade slides off the toast he’s biting into onto his shirt. 

In spite of his foul mood, Sergio smirks and appears on the edge of laughing. Rolling his eyes, Iker wipes the marmalade from his shirt and pops the finger into his mouth to suck it clean. There’s still a hint of orange stain left on his grey shirt. 

“What are you thinking about?” Sergio asks finally, while Iker hovers over the kitchen sink and splashes water onto the orange blotch. 

“You mean,” Iker answers, squeezing the water out of his shirt, “besides how I’ll have to change clothes now?”

“I mean when you think you’ll leave to find out.”

Iker shuts the water off and takes in the now larger blemish of his clothing. “I don’t know.” He turns back to Sergio and carefully sets his tone. “When do you prefer?”

“Never,” the ghost states. Iker sighs tiredly, to which Sergio stubbornly waves off. “In fact, the more I watch you, the less I want you to go do this.”

Iker groans faintly and trudges out of the kitchen, carrying his coffee up the stairs. “We already just—”

“No, I don’t care. You can’t just shut me off like this.” 

Sergio flickers to the top of the stairs, forcing Iker to gaze up to him. He continues to appear more distinct, with the determination lucid in his eyes. 

He presses on, “I can think of a thousand reasons why you shouldn’t do this.”

“I can think of a thousand why I need to,” Iker rebukes, sliding around Sergio to walk into his bedroom. “The main one being your eventual ability to pass on.”

“Iker, you don’t understand. You don’t understand how they work, and if you even see that one of them is alive, then I know you’ll be unable to resist seeking him out.”

“These men must be, at the very least, well into their eighties.” Iker throws off his shirt into the hamper, rubbing the damp spot of his stomach where the shirt stuck to him with its moisture. “I appreciate your concern, but I can handle myself, Sergio.”

Shaking his head over and over again, the ghost clutches at his forehead. “No, no, no, no.”

Iker withdraws a collared shirt from his wardrobe and buttons it up, the inward ends of his eyebrows dipping down. “I promise that you don’t need to worry,” he attempts assuring the ghost. “I’ll leave now to get it over with. To get everything involving them over with, for both of our sakes.” 

“I can’t believe this,” Sergio grouses, peeking at Iker through cracks between the fingers blanketing his face. “Not only are you out of your mind, but you somehow think this will do us both good.”

“It _will_.” After tucking the shirt’s hem into his jeans, he downs the rest of his coffee in spite of the burning heat on his tongue. For a few moments, he rests his eyes shut. “And when I return, you’ll see that you no longer have to worry and I’ll finally be able to get a good night’s rest.”

“Yeah, on the couch.” Once Iker tips into the hallway and down the stairs, Sergio adds, “So help me God, Casillas. You better be careful.” 

“It’s never been my intention to be anything but.”

—

Iker repeats the footsteps he took when originally researching the paranormal incidents of his home. He drives first to the town’s main library, musing underneath the tall ceiling for the remainder of his morning. He wastes an hour probing the newspaper collections to find the old article written on Sergio. Stupidly, he realizes the other names of the boys were not released owing to their minor status. With a pit of annoyance in his stomach, Iker wonders why Sergio was the only released name then. 

For several mundane hours, he labors over clippings belonging to the same era. The librarians more than once deliberately question his intentions, to which Iker politely hushes them away. As if he has some grand scheme of secrets. They cease prying by the third time he grinds minced words from his clenched teeth, headache getting the best of him.

At his wits’ end, the Spaniard ephemerally contemplates driving home to ask Sergio for the boys’ names.  He knows already the only answer the ghost would grant him, which encourages Iker to remain in the library with an endless quest in his hands. 

The library crowds with more people once it nears midday, and only then does fate spare Iker a hint. He chances on an old photograph of a plethora of teenagers; the title of the photograph mentions the town’s graduating class and lists names of each individual along the bottom. A few of the boys stand awkwardly with just barely surviving their coming-of-age epochs, while the majority bear a man’s face and wide shoulders. Iker gratefully recognizes Sergio standing in one of the middle rows, hair longer than he knows and with a clean-shaved face. 

Iker smiles for how well the man looks in the photograph, remembering that not long after this photo was taken that Sergio must have abandoned the town. A frown fights to his face once Iker identifies, a couple students to the right of Sergio, one of the three men accountable for his murder. Immediately, he scans through unfamiliar faces until he spies the last two of the men, spread out in the photograph. By their position in the rows, Iker gathers their names and writes them promptly on a piece of scratch paper.

Motivated with the new information, Iker exits out of the library database to begin a new tab of its obituaries. One by one, he inputs their names into the search bar and waits for the results to load. 

The first man he looks up yields an obituary from more than three decades ago. With the brutal battle of cancer, he had died young. 

“I hope it hurt,” Iker mutters shamelessly, unheard in the solitude of his corner in the room. “I hope no one wept for you.”

The second man had died twelve years ago. Old and with a loving, wide-reaching family, as described by the small paragraph. It inspires a massive ball of undirected resentment to nag at Iker’s headache. It throws him off when the obituary announces the man had left many of his possessions and wealth to local charities. 

A troubled mind strewn with guilt, likely.

As for the third name, Iker hovers the mouse over the search button. His breath catches in the hollow of his lungs, unsure of how he’ll react to whatever the results will provide. 

He clicks search and exhales sharply. There’s not obituary on the last man. Mind strained, he checks to see if he committed a typo of the name. In spite of there being none, he refreshes the page. 

_0 Results Found_

“He’s alive.”

He knows it. He knows it with no additional evidence, regardless of the fact that the man could have simply moved and died elsewhere in the world. Iker knows now, with abundant certainty in his shriveled chest, the last man sleeps soundly in the same town Sergio anguishes in. 

After scratching out the two names on his sheet of paper, he opens a more generic search engine and gets back to work. 

—

In his head, he already hears Sergio distaste and scorn for where he parks his car. The car’s windows are rolled up and sunglasses obscure his face. Leaning back in his seat, Iker observes the house down the block from his car. He’s skulked within the neighborhood for a bit of time now, eyes frequently narrowing on every aspect of the house. The white door, the open windows, the driveway. There’s more than two cars parked on its flat concrete, one compact and the other a dark blue SUV. He tells himself he won’t move from this spot, not until the man leaves his house and Iker can see his face for himself. 

Ringing him out of his consuming thoughts, Iker’s smart phone sounds and startles his shoulders. He curses underneath his breath and answers quickly. 

“Hello?”

“Iker.”

_Shit_. “Cris? Why are you calling?”

“Because you have not responded back to my email in a couple of days. Why is this? Cesc tells me you called him, but you cannot talk to me?” Cristiano sounds indignant and amused all at once. 

Averting his eyes from the house, Iker lowers his voice to stifle a sigh. “Listen, Cris, now is not a good time—”

Cris scoffs, “You cannot run away from me now that I’ve got a hold of you finally. What kind of vacation makes you too busy for a phone call?”

“This is not a vacation.” 

“Oh? Then I can expect you back at work tomorrow?”

Iker groans; they haven’t even started arguing yet and he’s already defeated. “No.”

“This break is unlike you, Iker. And I know you. We had a meeting today, anyway. Everyone wants you back.” 

“You know why I’m doing this.” Iker rubs at his hairline. “I still can’t...”

Over the line, Iker hears Cristiano click his tongue and murmur something in Portuguese. “If you do not come here, then I’m going there and bringing you back myself.”

The Spaniard’s stomach drops when he notices the SUV pulling out of the driveway. Cristiano’s declaration does little to ease his worries. “What?” Starting the engine, Iker begins slowly following the car. “You can’t. Why are you doing this?”

“You’re a better man than this.”

“Says Cristiano Ronaldo,” Iker deadpans. 

“Please.” Iker perceives the playful smug of Cristiano’s tone. “All the more reason to believe it. You’re our saint, no? I have your home address on records, you know.” 

The SUV turns a handful of corners until it leaves the neighborhood. Once it pulls out onto the main road, Iker’s gets stuck behind two other cars. “Fuck.”

“Don’t worry, only a few of the boys and I know it,” Cris mistakenly assures him. “What days work best for you?”

“No days,” Iker roughly interjects, “because none of you are coming here. I’ll email you back and call you later. If you want, I’ll even call your mother if it makes you feel better, and whoever the hell else. But Cris, this really isn’t a good time.” 

Knowing all too well the wrath of Cristiano Ronaldo to burst from his actions, Iker hangs up and tosses his cell phone to the passenger seat. 

To add one to his misfortunate, Iker soon hits a red light, separated from the SUV. He strains his eyes to follow the path the car takes, relieved when it turns right to a shopping center. As soon as the light turns green, he regrettably screws over incoming cars by swerving to the right and hurriedly rolling into the large parking lot. He doesn’t pay attention to the honking he spurs on.

Iker pinpoints the car positioned nearby the grocery store, vacant of passengers. Iker sets his car on the opposite side of the lane, farther down yet still within eyesight. Casting aside his sunglasses inside the car, he then strolls into the store. 

As it stands, Iker functions solely on reacting. He hasn’t developed a meticulous design to follow if he confronts the man. He abides by the ill-feelings of his gut, telling him to walk down the aisles, in pursuit of the man. His eyes are hardened and unfriendly as they inspect each of the customers, lingering around those of age and frailty. 

“May I help you, sir?” The employee, reassembling canned goods according to their brand name, falters at his stare. “Are you all right?”

Iker brushes the woman off, jogging down the aisle to trail into the next. Towards the middle of it, a man pokes around bagged nuts and dried fruits. His hairs are desaturated with age, left whitened underneath his cap. His hand quivers in the air, fingers barely strong enough to grasp the bag of mixed nuts. 

As Iker calmly walks down the aisle to the man, he recognizes the flurry of freckles, though warped with wrinkles and sagging skin.

The unforgiving nature of time and aging has always frightened Iker. He’d balk at the elderly as a child, intrigued by their wisdom, although always terrified of the smell of death. Here, in the depths of a grocery market, he feels no semblance of pity for the old man. He sees the curved spine and age spots of the skin, knowing that Sergio will never hold the opportunity of reaching such an age. 

He’ll never grow old, while his killer walks the earth with a long and fruitful life.

“Gabriel,” Iker spits. 

The man twists his head in Iker’s direction, thick eyebrow shooting up questionably at Iker’s unmistakable rage. “Do I know you?”

In the two steps it takes to reach him, Iker shoves the man against the shelves and presses his forearm against Gabriel’s throat. Much of the man’s weight immediately sags on him, which Iker uses his own body to support. Just barely. 

“Where is Sergio’s body?”

The aged man spits and wheezes and gasps. Iker digs his arm further in, unkind, begging to do more. He wants to kill this man, to make him suffer eternally. The absorbing desire of it is unlike anything he’s felt before.

“Who is Sergio?”

Enraged, Iker jerks his arm down and instead grips the man’s jaw. His fingernails scratch along Gabriel’s delicate skin. 

“Do not fuck around with me right now,” Iker warns. “I know what you did to him, I know how you three killed him.”

“Who the hell are—”

Iker snarls, “If you do not tell me where you put his body, I’ll kill you.” He’s both surprised and revolted when the man laughs.

“You’re going to kill me?” Gabriel’s lips stretch into a smile. He grips the front of Iker’s shirt. “No, you’re not. You don’t have it in you, you spineless sack of shit. Taking me on in a market? You’re not just stupid, but you take me for stupid, too.”

“How do you think I found you?” With his grip already tightened on Gabriel’s jaw, Iker can only shoves the man deeper into the shelves. He’s sick with the pleasure Gabriel’s pained grunt gives him. “I know where you live. I know where you sleep.” The stink of newly spilled blood floods his nostrils as he recalls the nightmare of Sergio’s death. Iker can barely make out anything in his life but the distinct hatred he bears for this man. “Tell me where his body is.”

“Grandpa?”

On its own accord, Iker’s body jerks back a step. His wild eyes find the young boy two meters from them, holding a box of cereal. The boy looks between the two of them, lips curved in a pout and trembling. Iker drags a hand through his hair, yanking on the ends. The air leaves his lungs so shamefully. 

“Juan,” Gabriel acknowledges and straightens from his slouch. Iker doesn’t want to think about the obvious concern in the old man’s voice. He still can see so much only in anger. 

“Tell me,” Iker insists, turning his back to the child. “Or else.”

With so much venom in his stare, the man gives in. 

—

Iker comes home late in the evening with mud caking his shoes. Water drips from his pants wherever he walks in the house, leaving a trail of dirt up the stairs. The first room he retreats to, after glimpsing at Sergio’s swirling shadows in his bedroom, is the bathroom. Both to shower and as a sanctuary from the ghost’s presence. 

When he departs the bathroom, a towel around his waist, his skin is raw and prickly with goosebumps from the cold Sergio’s black mass emits. Iker shuts the door of his bedroom, waiting for Sergio’s eagerness to question him.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Sergio starts. With Iker’s company, he begins to develop into his human figure. 

“There was no chance of me being anything but,” Iker comments languidly. He peers into his wardrobe for clean pajamas. 

The ghost appears taken back. “They didn’t threaten you? They didn’t hurt you in any form?”

“If anything, it was the opposite.”

Sergio opens his mouth, closes it. Confusion relinquishes so easily on his face, instead conforming to disbelief. Quietly and as if fearful of the answer, he asks, “What did you do?"

Iker drops the towel from around his waist unabashedly. He thinks he sees endearment in the ghost’s eyes, and for a brief moment Iker wonders what it must be like to be dead and wanting and afraid all at once. He doesn’t ask, simply watches as Sergio’s eyes glue to his body as he pulls the pajamas on. 

Perhaps annoyed now, Sergio repeats his question. “What did you do, Iker?”

“Only Gabriel is alive.” The torn expression on Sergio’s pallid face agonizes Iker. “I shoved him against the aisle of a grocery store.” Iker doesn’t dare tell Sergio that he thinks he would have killed the man had they not been in public. Doesn’t say that he choked the man. 

“What the hell—” The bedroom lights flicker for a second. Sergio’s anguish and craze floods everything Iker feels. “Why did you do that?!”

“In order to get him to give me an answer!” 

“You put yourself in danger with that man. He was the leader, he was the worst one! And you thought you could _hurt_ him.”

“He is on the verge of dying,” Iker retaliates. “He poses no threat to me.”

“Oh, good.” Sergio’s eyes narrow. “Then you can have two ghosts haunting you!” 

Bringing a hand down his face, Iker rests into his bed. 

“Was it worth doing all this to yourself? What did he tell you?”

Iker nudges the base of his palm against his temple. 

“Did he tell you, Iker?”

He inhales deeply, counts to five in his head, exhales.

“Iker...” Sergio’s voice is nearly inaudible. “What did he say?”

He has to look back to the ghost now, whispers, “They burnt your body.” His eyes sting. Voice louder, he adds, “Then they threw your dust into the river.” 


End file.
